


A Long Way To Fall

by valkyriefowl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Adam-Centric, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Good Omens Big Bang 2019, M/M, Magic, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22752076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyriefowl/pseuds/valkyriefowl
Summary: Adam Young is 11 years old, and last week he stopped the apocalypse. Not that he remembers any of that. In order to keep him out of trouble, Heaven and Hell decide it’s best if he has no knowledge of his power, and goes back to his normal life. Aziraphale and Crowley decide to don their disguises once more to keep an eye on the Antichrist, without orders from Head Office.As long as they stay out of the way, everything will go according to Plan.(Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t good at that)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Wensleydale/Adam Young (Good Omens)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	A Long Way To Fall

**Author's Note:**

> OH BOY, this fic has been such an amazing journey and I'm so happy that I finished it! This is by far my biggest project and I couldn't have done it without my wonderful beta Dimwit and my talented artist Tifaria helping and supporting me at every stage.  
> Good Omens Big Band mods, thank you so much for organising this event and being so patient with my questions and posting date changes. I've loved working on this project and it helped me improve a truly crazy amount, and I would have never been able to do this without the support of everyone working on it.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy this fic just as much as I enjoyed working on it :)

After Satan had disappeared, the whole affair ended rather quickly. There were some words shared between Arthur and Aziraphale. He’d gone glassy-eyed and nodded a lot, so Gabriel assumed that everything was taken care of. He wasn’t the biggest fan of dealing with the human element of cleaning up. Their minds were so... simple.

“So… what does this mean now?” Gabriel looked at Beelzebub, who shrugged.

“Beatzzzz me,” they said, and picked absentmindedly at one of the scales on their arm. Gabriel tried his best to ignore them and focus instead on the retreating figures at the gates to the airbase. After the boy had done everything so incorrectly he’d gotten the devil himself fooled, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. The Great War still needed to happen, of course. There was no doubting that it had to happen. First the War, then Heaven’s victory, and then peace on earth.

“There must be something we can do to fix this.”

“Of courze there iz, it just izn’t anything you can do,” Beelzebub said. Gabriel wanted to express frustration. A human might have yelled, or thrown something, or stormed off. He wasn’t human, though. He smiled with gritted teeth and looked down at Beelzebub. They were examining a piece of their skin very closely. Gabriel prayed that they wouldn’t do anything with it.

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, it’z simple, izn’t it? The Antichrist iz ourrr businezz. You’re just here to start the war. If anyone should be worried about what happenz next, it’z me.” They looked remarkably unworried.

“Shouldn’t you be worried, then?” Gabriel asked.

They shrugged. “We’ll figure something out.”

Silence. Beelzebub flicked their scale away. Gabriel almost relaxed, until they started picking at another one. He focussed back on the gates. The children were picking up their bikes. Aziraphale and Crowley had already left. The Bentley continued to smoulder.

“Something needz to happen to the traitorz.”

Gabriel smiled. “I couldn’t agree more.”

Two weeks later, at eight o’clock sharp, A. Z. Fell and Co. had open its doors. This was a welcome sight for the rest of this particular Soho neighbourhood. It had been a long time, almost two weeks since the shop last opened. No one liked to see the dust gathering at the dark windows. Some of the more superstitious workers along the street thought of the open bookshop as a portent of sorts. Good things usually happened when it was open.

There hadn’t really been any reason for Aziraphale to open the shop. He just felt like he should.

“Aziraphale!” a voice called. Aziraphale froze, book in hand, and tried desperately not to let his anxiety show. It had only been a week since the disastrous end of the world, and this was his first contact with anyone from Upstairs.

“We have some things to discuss with you.” This one was a different voice. The pit in Aziraphale’s stomach grew.

“Important things,” yet another voice said. Aziraphale mustered a pained smile onto his face and turned around.

“Gabriel. Sandalphon, Uriel. How can I help you?” He clutched the book in front of his chest, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Last time he’d seen these faces had been when they kidnapped Crowley and did something terrible to him, something he still would not say out loud. He wanted so badly to stand up to them, but that same fear kept coming back. The easiest way to get them out of his store was to smile, agree, and wait for it to be over.

“Aziraphale!” Gabriel cried with a wide grin. He held his hands open, palms up. To a normal person, this would be friendly and welcoming. To Aziraphale, it was meaningless, a pantomime of sincerity from someone who had never seen it. The gesture was further negated by Uriel and Sandalphon, who flanked Aziraphale on either side. He was boxed in on all sides. Trapped in his own bookshop.

“Yes?”

“Now, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said, and put a hand on his shoulder. “I know there have been some… issues in the past with our interpretation of the Great Plan. It happens! We’ve had some time to think about it, and you were right.” Aziraphale frowned, confused.

“We admit that you had some points we hadn’t thought of,” Uriel said.

“Yeah!” said Gabriel, pointing at them. “Like… when the Great War will start. It obviously didn’t start then!” He laughed. Sandalphon gave a wry chuckle. Uriel did not laugh.

“But, Aziraphale, we’re all angels. We’re all a part of the Plan. And, if we want Heaven to win, we need to work together. And you do want Heaven to win, don’t you?” 

“Oh-of course!” Aziraphale said, shuffling back, “There isn’t any other way.”

“I knew you’d remember that, eventually,” Uriel said.

“Right. And you, Aziraphale, you! You are the most important part. The man on the ground. The expert in all this…” he gestured around to the shop, “human stuff.”

“So what are you asking of me?” There had to be a reason that Gabriel had come to his bookshop, here on earth with Uriel and Sandalphon, and it can’t have been to have a chat about the Plan. Unless it involved him.

“How can I put this? We need your expertise up with us. Not down here.”

“You’re asking me to leave my post, come back to Heaven?”

“It isn’t that we don’t appreciate your work down here!” Gabriel said, and Aziraphale didn’t miss Sandalphon’s rolled eyes. “But things are different now.”

But things weren’t different, not really. Heaven had their Plan all worked out, and Aziraphale was the one who threw a spanner in the works. He didn’t want to go back to Heaven, where his attempts to help save humanity from the Plan would be stopped completely. He’d known their kindness was a facade from the second they walked in and cornered him in his own shop. But they were correct about one thing. Earth was Aziraphale’s territory, and he wasn’t about to give it up.

“Why?” he asked, and Gabriel frowned.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want me to come back to Heaven?”

“I just told you. You understand humans and their eccentricities. That’s invaluable in helping us to care for them. You can do so much more good when you aren’t stuck down here.”

But how can you claim to care for them if all you want is to fight? How could they ask him to destroy humanity when he’d just risked his life to protect it? He’d rather be discorporated than spend the rest of eternity stuck beside the three angels standing in his bookshop.

“Would it not be better, for the Plan, I mean, if I were to stay on earth as I have been? Keep everything in check while you come up with the new Plan.”

Gabriel shook his head. “We need you up with us. C’mon, Aziraphale. We’re a team!”

_Were they?_ Aziraphale fixed a thin smile and shouldered his way out from between Uriel and Sandalphon.

“As the human expert, I must say that they are remarkably fragile things. Completely resistant to change! If I am unable to do my work, who knows what the Other Side could do in my absence. No!” he said and slid the French poetry back onto the shelf with finality. “I simply must stay here on earth.” He turned around and folded his hands in front of him. “For the good of the Plan.”

Uriel stared at him, and he stared back with a benign smile. There were two ways that this could end, and it was their choice. Uriel had punched him, before everything had gone down at the airbase. Either Uriel would leave, and the other angels would accept what he had to say and leave as well. Or, they wouldn’t.

“The War is going to happen, Aziraphale,” they said. “No matter how you feel about it. Heaven’s plan will prevail.” They turned and left, Sandalphon at their heels.

“Is that all?” Aziraphale asked, and Gabriel nodded.

“We’ll let you know if anything changes,” he said. Aziraphale knew that it couldn’t be that easy for them to leave him alone, that he would need to leave his post eventually. But this gave him time to think. To come up with his own plan to save humanity once more. He was an angel, humanities’ guardian angel. There was nothing more to it than that.

“Goodbye, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said and walked away. He paused at the door to the bookshop. “Earth suits you,” he said, and as the bell tingled Aziraphale wasn’t sure if he was meant to be offended.

-

Being 11, Adam decided, was an awful lot of work. There were dramas at school between all the different gangs, his parents were making him do all sorts of boring jobs and chores at home, and he had to take some big stupid test at the end of the year. There was also the whole thing with the world going mad for a few days.

Not that Adam had seen any of it. He’d been at home, grounded. In fact, the five days it had taken everything to happen had been so boring that Adam didn’t even remember it. He did remember finding Dog in the garden and being allowed to keep him. But that had been the only good that had come from the whole debacle.

“You know what you did,” Arthur Young had said. But, as soon as he’d said that, exactly what he had done slid right out of his head and he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it had been. The cloak-bay war hadn’t been that bad, had it? Or perhaps it had been because he had stolen all those apples from the orchard over the years. He’d asked the Them if they had any ideas, but none of them did.

“Maybe they found out about the time we built a car out of milk boxes and crashed into Mrs Brownlee’s roses,” Pepper said when they had managed to reconvene at the hideout. “Unlucky that you had to stay home over all that. I got to go to mum’s tarot reading class.”

“I thought you didn’t like all that?” Adam asked. Pepper and her mum were a little bit odd, but Adam was sure that she didn’t believe in any of that.

“No, I like that tarot reading. It’s the _crystals_ I don’t like. Just because you think the colour is pretty, doesn’t mean it has magical powers,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“But isn’t that the same thing?” Wensleydale asked. “The tarot cards and the crystals.”

“No, it _isn’t_. Magic isn’t real. But everything has a meaning, if you know how to see it.” That was something that had always fascinated Adam about Pepper. Once she decided that she believed in something, she was unshakeable.

“What’s a tare-oh reading?” Brian asked, licking his fingers. He’d brought some homemade cookies and managed to share them around evenly. Mostly.

“It’s a fancy deck of cards that you use to do magic. It’s what witches do when they want to read your mind, I read it in a magazine,” Wensleydale said, “Of course, none of it is real. You can’t read minds.”

“That’s because it isn’t reading minds,” Pepper said, “it’s telling you something about the future.”

Brian nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds pretty alright to me. You never know what could happen in the future.”

The Them all hummed their agreement.

“Like, you could get a card that says, ‘look out, aliens are coming!’ And you wouldn’t know if it was true or not until it happened. So, I guess that makes it sort of true. In its own way,” he said. Brian was very much a glass half full person.

“You don’t get cards like that,” Pepper said, leaning over to steal a cookie. “You get cards that say, ‘you are too close to see the big picture’, or, ‘you must learn to accept change.’”

“Really?” Adam said, disappointed. “There’s nothing about aliens or spaceships at all in that future.”

And, for some reason, that struck a chord in his brain. It seemed familiar, somehow, like a dream he’d forgotten. Like, if he only looked hard enough, he’d be able to unlock that bit of his brain and remember all the amazing things that were locked away.

But then Brian found a funny worm and threatened to put it in their hair, and it was back to the Them and the real world.

-

The drive to Tadfield would usually take around two and a quarter hours for a normal human, in a normal human car, to drive. This included the London Orbital Motorway, the long stretches of countryside nothingness, and the horrible 20 mph stretch with the road works that had seemed to take years to complete. The first time Crowley had driven this road it had taken him 23 minutes and 42 seconds.

He was considerably more careful this time. The Bentley, now loaded with boxes and bags and terracotta planters, probably wouldn’t have taken kindly to those kinds of speeds anyway. There were some things that deserved to be done slowly, with care. This drive was one of them.

For all of the things packed into the Bentley, most of them weren’t Crowley’s. He had some clothes and a few pieces of odd-looking modern art, but that was about it. His flat in London had been filled with plants and air, and that was how he’d liked it. Living for six millenia meant that you never really found a place to truly call home. Why waste time trying, if you had to move on eventually?

He had taken one plant with him. It was a small pothos plant that Aziraphale had given him when he first moved to London. There was something about that angelic touch that had stopped it from developing the fear that the other plants had. He’d kept it well away from them, on the windowsill in his room, so they wouldn’t get any ideas about mutiny, or drooping their leaves. Today, it sat in the cup holder of the Bentley, one tendril gently touching Crowley’s calf.

Aziraphale had fared far worse. They weren’t leaving London forever, they’d agreed. No need to sell the shop and deal with the paperwork, especially when Aziraphale would likely spend the rest of the time they had before the next Apocalypse sorting through the entirety of his massive collection anyway. No, it was much easier just to close the store for a while. Mr Fell always kept such odd hours anyway, it was doubtful that anyone would notice. 

And so, here they were. One angel, one demon, one tiny pothos, and a car full of old books (mostly Aziraphale’s, save for the Big Book of Astrology, with a carefully flattened page on Alpha Centauri that only had minimal scorch marks).

“Oughtn’t we keep an eye on the boy? Make sure he’s out of trouble,” Aziraphale had said to Crowley over dairy-free cheesecake.

Crowley frowned. Not a month ago Aziraphale had been reminding him in no uncertain terms that they were enemies, and hereditary ones at that. And to leave his bookshop? Crowley picked over his slice and his next words carefully.

“How do you mean? We can’t keep popping around every time you think something might happen.”

“I wasn’t thinking of just visiting, I was thinking… perhaps we might… want to stay in Tadfield?” Aziraphale blushed and took a bite of his cheesecake.

“You mean _live_ in Tadfield?” Aziraphale nodded slowly. “Do I look like the kind of person…”

“Well, no, but you said the same thing about Warlock, hmm?” It was Crowley’s turn to blush, the tips of his ears going pink as he scowled and stabbed at his slice.

“That was for work, angel,” he muttered, “it wasn’t like I chose… I didn’t…” Aziraphale smirked and raised an eyebrow. Crowley shook his head and placed his fork on the plate.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Aziraphale said simply. Crowley could tell there was something else. Aziraphale didn’t like change, he never had. There was a reason that he stayed in the same fashions, listened to the same music, ate the same food for centuries on end. There must be a reason for this as well.

“I’m a demon, angel, we don’t do things just because they’re right.”

Aziraphale took another bite of cheesecake, and they sat in silence. The cafe was busy around them, it was a Sunday morning after all, but their little bubble was never broken. Aziraphale swallowed his slice.

“They visited me a few days ago. The archangels.” Crowley didn’t like where this was going. There were very few good reasons for a visit from them. “They wanted me to join them again, go back Upstairs before the War.”

“But we stopped the War from ever starting,” Crowley said. 

“Apparently not for long. They talked like they had a new plan, said they needed my ‘expertise’. I… I’m worried that they might go after Adam.” The air in the cafe seemed to still at that moment, a heavy weight of anxiety knotting in Crowley’s chest. They really had thought it was over.

“And you think that being in Tadfield will help stop them?” Crowley asked.

“If we keep him out of trouble, keep him from remembering what he is… we might be able to save them. All of them.”

Crowley was a demon. He was created to build beauty in the stars. Six millennia ago his wings burned and he never flew again. Every time he did it reminded him of falling, of the second before impact, of the forgotten memory of peace among the stars. Whatever goodness that had been inside his soul had shrivelled up and died. He was not meant to want to save them. He was not meant to help. He was not meant to feel.

“I’ll do it,” he said, and the relieved smile on Aziraphale’s face was enough to make it worth it.

-

There was talk in Heaven.

There was never talk in Heaven.

Not only was it bad behaviour, which was the opposite kind of behaviour Heaven endorsed, but it was also rather pointless. When you know the behind the scenes truths of the universe, there is very little in the way of petty gossip that is interesting enough to talk about.

There was talk in Heaven of the agent. The talk went that the agent, who had been Heaven’s most trusted representative on earth (which really meant nothing when Heaven wasn’t technically on earth), was being replaced. The reasons changed depending on who was talking. Some said that it was for disobeying orders, some said it was for not carrying them out in the first place. Some said that it was because he was fallen.

Zephyre had thought all this talk was a waste of time until it turned out that it was true. The agent wasn’t cooperating, wasn’t telling the full story, was fraternising with the other side’s agent. There were only five angels in the whole of Heaven that knew the truth, and Zephyre was now one of them.

“We want to send you down to earth,” said Gabriel to a gobsmacked Zephyre, “to help us carry out the Plan.”

“Is the agent coming back?” Zephyre asked, and Michael laughed.

“He’s staying on earth. As long as he’s there, the other agent will stay out of your way.”

“You’ll be working with another agent on the ground as well,” Gabriel said. “We’ll let you know your part in the Plan once you’re on earth. It does take some… getting used to.”

Zephyre had agreed to everything. What else could they have done? This was the promotion of a lifetime, and it meant they were able to do something big, something with impact. And if they had to circumvent the agent entirely? Then that was just part of the job.

-

Anathema Device learned of Crowley and Aziraphale’s return to Tadfield the same way that every other resident did. A massive black car purred up to the Squeaky Wheel, Tadfield’s restaurant of choice, and two men got out. Anathema was opposite the restaurant, triple checking the ley-lines in this area when she saw them for the first time. It surprised her so much that she dropped her pendulum in shock.

“Book thieves?” she said, and although she was all the way across the road, they somehow heard her. Crowley whipped around and, when he saw who it was, waved.

“Bicycle girl! Fancy seeing you here,” he said, as if it was a perfectly normal thing for him to be back in Tadfield after almost being at the centre of the end of the world.

“I do live here, you know,” she said, crossing her arms. “Why are you here?”

“Hello, Anathema, dear. How are you?” Aziraphale called out, with a little wave and angelic smile. Anathema scowled as she picked up her pendulum. Aziraphale and Crowley were talking to each other as she crossed the road.

“You know her name?” she heard Crowley whisper. Aziraphale tapped his arm, too fond for how Anathema remembered them.

“Well, yes, it would be rather rude to refer to her as bicycle girl, especially after she helped out quite a bit with– “

“Why are you back?” she asked, interrupting Aziraphale.

“To check on things, my dear,” he said. “And make sure that nothing else happens. That everything is truly over.”

Anathema wanted very badly to be mad at them. Be angry for letting the end of the world almost happen. For letting Adam be bullied by their own kind. For being someone to blame for all the pain and worry that had been caused. But she felt the anger leech out of her as Aziraphale rested a hand lightly on her arm.

They had been the ones to help stop the Apocalypse, after all.

“I… suppose that’s alright then,” she said, and went to walk back across the road.

“Hold on a minute!” she said, whipping back around. “Are you the ones that caused the cottage on Rosehill lane? Because I can’t remember it ever being there before!” Crowley frowned and look at Aziraphale. Aziraphale blushed and skittered away from Anathema’s eyes.

“I thought you said, ‘do it the human way’, angel?” he said, and Aziraphale spluttered.

“Well, I didn’t mean for it! I was looking at the map and it just appeared there!” he said, wringing his hands. Crowley laughed and shook his head.

“What do you mean appeared there? Cottages don’t just appear out of thin air,” Anathema said.

“You can’t tell me after everything that happened that they can’t,” Crowley said, and when she thought it over she realised she couldn’t.

“Well I’m sorry, but I truly didn’t mean to make it appear. And it was just so perfect that I had to get it!”

“So… have you found anything? Is it all really over?” Anathema asked. She couldn’t help the anxiety bubbling up inside her chest when she thought about the possibility of it not being over, of there being another battle for them to fight. The hand holding her pendulum started to shake, and Aziraphale felt so much regret on his shoulders that he wanted to sit down, body heavy with sorrow.

“We haven’t found anything yet, my dear,” and Anathema could hardly breathe. “But that is a good thing. That means that nothing has happened.”

Anathema sagged under the hand resting on her shoulder that she hadn’t even realised Aziraphale had placed there. She looked at Crowley for reassurance, and he nodded at her with tight eyes and drawn lips. She trusted that he wouldn’t sugar coat it.

“We’ve been working with them longer than the earth has existed,” he said, “and if anything happens, we will know about it.”

She was tired. She hadn’t realised it, but her constant checking and rechecking, monitoring the atmosphere and looking over her shoulder was exhausting. She hoped that maybe, after this, she might believe them.

It was worse for Newt. She didn’t tell them that, but she knew that she’d get home tonight and let him know as soon as he slunk through the door. He woke up at the crack of dawn to check the papers, scanning through them at a lightning pace. He stayed up late every night, going through old papers and journals from the library, scientific papers, press releases from every major government in the world. He worked in the library and spent every spare second researching and trying to understand what had happened, trying to learn how to fix it. The sunken bags under his eyes were deep and his hands shook from the coffee he drank in order to stay awake.

“I’ll let Newt know,” she said, and Aziraphale surprised everyone by leaning in and giving her a hug. He was warm and soft and strong, and Anathema did her best not to start shaking. Aziraphale leaned back after a minute, but what Anathema wished was an eternity, to look her in the eyes once more.

“My dear, I am so, so sorry that you had to deal with that. The end of the world was never something you should have had to worry about. These aren’t your problems to bear.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and Anathema did nothing to stop them from slowly trickling down her cheeks. She didn’t sob or fall apart. She simply let the tears fall, let herself be calmed by the release. Aziraphale understood this, felt it in the innate sense of his Grace that allowed him to understand these kinds of things, and patted her on the arm.

“Go home, bicycle girl,” Crowley said, and Anathema nodded. She turned to leave but stopped before she took her first step.

“Thank you for saving the world,” she said, not looking back at them. She suddenly wanted to turn around and hug them, to hide herself away from the harshness of the world in their knowledge and strength and protection. They had stood up to the devil and won, and Anathema didn’t have that strength. She knew that plainly herself.

She didn’t turn back to them. She crossed the road and picked up her bicycle from where she had discarded it. She allowed herself a quick glance at their retreating backs as they entered the restaurant. Their auras flickered back at her. She almost biked off and left, but she stopped herself. Peered at the auras more closely.

They were so strong that they whited out the rest of the world, blinding her like the sun. This was the same as the last time she’d seen them. One aura was concentrated in a ball of pure light, the other in a ball that emitted shadow. The difference was in the edges. They blurred together, overlapping like waves on a beach. She gaped at them, watching the cosmic light bounce and swirl, until her eyes hurt and she had to blink away.

-

The chair was damp. Out of all the things that happened today, that was the worst. Because it wasn’t properly wet, the scratchy upholstery was just… a little damp. A wet chair could mean someone had spilt something on it and left it to dry. Any number of normal things, water, coffee, blood. These things would make sense, and they wouldn’t leave the thing sat on the chair to wonder exactly what was making the chair damp. All possible explanations she could think of were bad.

She hadn’t even done anything to warrant having to sit on this chair outside of her director’s office. Sure, she was bad at her job, but that was a good thing down here! She sat at her desk and watched humans doing dumb human stuff. She filed all the things that caused badness to seep out into the world. Drank shitty coffee straight from the development labs, designed to be even worse than the last batch. Played mandatory office team bonding games. Existed.

The door opened.

“Dia?”

She grunted. That was her name.

“Get in here,” the voice said. Dia peeled herself off the chair. The fabric clung to her work pants with a Velcro shick.

When she left the office, she found herself with a promotion, and a ticket straight to humanity. All she had to do was watch the agent and the Antichrist at their least interesting. It was what she already did with the humans, except this time she’d be up close.

_Don’t fuck up like the other agent did_ was her MO. And she may have been bad at her job, but she could manage that.

-

There were many unique and interesting things about Tadfield Primary that the human occupants would never learn. It was established in 1928, directly between the two wars, and every young man that had attended on that day ended up in the trenches. It was home to a completely impossible magnetic field six feet below the art room. For the past six years, it had held the Antichrist within its walls and taught him arithmetic. It was the first school in the universe to employ two demons as teachers. 

Not that Adam was aware of any of this, despite his lack of human-ness. He was simply excited for his new teacher. He was much younger than the other teachers, he’d have to be. His hair was spiky and he wore tinted glasses indoors. Adam had seen his car around Tadfield, and there was no way it could have been anyone else’s but his. Mr Ashtoreth wasn’t like the other teachers at school. He was _cool_.

Crowley was less excited about his new post at Tadfield Primary than Adam was. Aziraphale had been right, to an extent. He did enjoy spending time with the kids, filling their heads with stuff that made their eyes light up. And Adam was a nice boy, much nicer than Warlock had been (which Crowley decided was really a compliment on his behalf). He liked those parts of his new position. It was the rest of it that wasn’t as nice.

Staff meetings especially, Crowley realised, really did deserve their place in Hell. It was half an hour every morning of tedious planning and small talk. Today it was about the inter-house sports competition. Terry, who taught the younger kids, handed the fliers around with an enthusiasm that made Crowley want to flip him off.

“The roster is on the back,” he said, “and if you look at where the sack races are…”

Ah, Crowley thought, young teachers. Fresh into the real world. Filled with the drive to make a change. It was exhausting.

He took the rest of the meeting to glance at the teachers around him. They were all perfectly normal people. A bit annoying, and prone to leaving coffee grounds in the sink, but so was every human. He would have to stay careful, make sure that no one found out what he really was. And make sure that no other demons came close to Adam.

Watching him think from across the room, Dia smiled. 

-

In the month following the subversion of the end of the world, Anathema Device had allowed her guard to fall. This was exactly what her mother had warned her about, back when the prophecies actually mattered. If she lost focus, the consequences could be catastrophic. She revelled in it now, the days spent away from her notecards and iPad and the nights where she would sit outside and not think about the future, or anything really. Newt had helped her burn the rest of the prophecy, and it had slowly slipped from her focus.

It hadn’t left her yet, that purpose. The memory of the prophecies was in the empty boxes, the pens that she kept in her pockets and bags and hair in case she needed to write something down. In the compulsion to lean over the side of the bed in the middle of the night and grab a small square of discoloured card. The memory had become just another remnant of her past. 

Newt also carried the memory of his role in the end of the world with him. His habits ran far shallower than Anathema’s, but he kept them anyway. He would sit in the mornings with his tea and scissors and mountain of mail. He’d subscribed to every paper and publication that delivered out in Tadfield. It hurt Anathema’s brain to look at.

Recent events reminded Anathema of how, even though she had tried to leave the memory in the past, it was something that would keep catching up to her. Aziraphale and Crowley wouldn’t come back to Tadfield without good cause. There must be something brewing. Only this time she didn’t have anything to tell her to watch out for it.

“Sunset at quarter to five today,” Newt said at breakfast. It was a Sunday, and it was Sunday tradition to watch the sunset from the hill behind the cottage. Anathema hummed her understanding and sipped at her coffee.

They sat out on the hill quarter of an hour before the sun was scheduled to set that night. They had Anathema’s theodolite set up on the soft tartan blanket that had been found nestled in the back of the linen closet. It was a pleasant temperature, for that time of year, but Anathema snuggled into Newt’s side all the same. She liked it there. It made her feel human.

“That’s odd,” Newt said.

“What’s odd?”

“It’s almost five.”

Anathema grabbed his hand and checked his watch. Its face was scratched with age and love, and it indeed showed the time as three minutes to five. She checked her phone. She used to have a digital watch, until one day Newt had accidentally pressed a combination of the buttons that effectively bricked it. Neither anyone on the internet nor the repair person at the shop in London could figure out how it had happened. This was now totally normal for her.

It was indeed almost five o’clock. The sun remained in that almost-setting stage that turns the sky pink without taking away any of the light.

“I thought you said the sun was meant to set at quarter to?”

“That’s what the paper said.” He turned to her suddenly, a stricken look on his face. “You don’t think that I…”

He trailed off, and Anathema burst into laughter.

“No! No, I’m sure it must have been a mistake,” she started saying, and broke off into giggles at his frown. He shook his head with a fond smile and kissed the top of her head.

“It’s not the worst time for the sun to be broken,” he said. “At least it looks pretty.”

It took another twenty-six minutes for the sky to darken and dull into the night. It wasn’t her place, she decided, to have to worry about trying to fix whatever had gone wrong. She’d spent her whole life being the one responsible. Saving the world once was enough to be expected of any human. Right now, she was going to enjoy the sunset.

-

Zephyre had three days to adjust to having arms and legs and all the weird things humans had before they got their proper assignment. The instructions had been vague from the beginning. Go to earth to help make the Plan go smoothly. Work with another agent. Keep out of the original agent’s way. This meeting was to clear the water and make sure that everyone knew what they were doing. And that was good news for Zephyre. If they knew what their job actually was, they would be able to carry it out.

And here they were. At the meeting. And the only thing that stopped Zephyre from throwing holy fire was Gabriel’s hand on her arm and his strained half-smile.

“Zephyre, allow me to introduce your new… co-worker,” he said, gesturing to the figures opposite them.

“Who are you?” Zephyre asked. There were two people. Both had scales and both of them wore the rattiest clothes Zephyre had ever seen. One of them was tall, unnaturally so, with arms that were just a little too long to be human. The other had a fly on their head.

“This iz Dia,” said the short person. Dia did nothing to acknowledge this introduction.

“And who are you?”

They frowned. When they opened their mouth to speak and fly flew out. It made Zephyre’s skin crawl.

“Who… am I?” they said.

Zephyre nodded. “Uh, yes?” Dia was biting back a smirk.

“Zephyre, this is Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. They’re one of the… higher-ups down below,” Gabriel said to Zephyre. “They’re new,” he said to Beelzebub.

Zephyre nodded at the two demons. Neither nodded back. Stared at each other. No one spoke.

“Well, now that we know each other we’ll just get straight onto the assignment!”

Beelzebub held out two grubby case files for them and Dia to take. There was a noticeable sheen on the front, and the paper was stained. Zephyre conjured a tissue to hold it.

“You are to keep an eye on the boy, if he does anything suzpiciouz. Report back to us. Simple.”

“That’s it?” Dia asked. This was the first time Zephyre had heard her speak. Her voice wavered between a deep tenor and reedy soprano simultaneously, and set Zephyre’s balance haywire. It was all they could do to keep upright.

“Don’t let anyone know where you are from, ezpecially not the other agents,” Beelzebub continued.

“Wait, just a quick question,” Zephyre said, looking at Gabriel for confirmation of this ridiculous plan. They couldn’t be seriously told to work with the enemy! “Why are they here?” Dia laughed, and flicked through the case file with a sick grin. Zephyre looked down at the disgusting folder in their hand and held it up to Gabriel. “We’re enemies!”

“I understand your confusion, Zephyre, but this is helping in service of the plan! The Great Plan, that is.” He smiled like he was proud of himself for coming up with this brilliant idea. Zephyre was now beginning to suspect this was a test. It had to be! They seriously couldn’t be expecting an angel to work with a demon. 

“How!?”

“The Great War waz meant to start three weekz ago, but _someone’z_ agent got in the way.” Zephyre could see that, thank goodness, this information was at least new to Dia as well. She almost dropped her case file in shock.

“The Antichrist, the boy in the case file, was meant to start the war. Both agents’ interference meant that he didn’t. However!” he continued, while Beelzebub glared at him, “we know that since he renounced the Dark Lord as his father he’s now fully human. All you two need to do is keep an eye on him to make sure that he doesn’t do anything further.”

“I thought you said I got to hunt the Antichrist!” Dia looked down at the folder in disgust. “No one said anything about more surveillance.”

“Hunting! How can I possibly be asked to work like this!”

Gabriel sighed. “I see we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over. Zephyre, this is Dia. Dia, this is Zephyre.” He gestured between the two, and they glared at each other in silence. “You will both be in charge of making sure nothing out of the ordinary happens. Dia, you will keep tabs on your side’s other agent and the boy to see if he does anything demonic. Zephyre, you will keep tabs on our agent, and Dia. Clear?”

As much as Zephyre hated it, the plan made sense. There was no way in Heaven that any angel with an ounce of sense would trust a demon to follow orders.

“Clear,” Zephyre said.

“Fine. But I’m still mad that I don’t get to hunt him,” Dia said. Zephyre would have to be careful with this one.

“Are we done here? Thiz iz getting ridiculous.”

“I think so,” Gabriel said. “You’re free to go. Just… make sure to read the case file!” Dia had already turned to leave before he had finished speaking. If this was the company they were expected to keep, Zephyre didn’t know how the other agent had done it. First they had to wear a human suit, and now they were expected to work with a demon.

“Yes sir,” Zephyre said, and Gabriel sighed.

“Please don’t let her do… anything. This is our last chance, okay?” Gabriel said, lowering his voice.

“I won’t,” Zephyre promised.

“Good. I knew I could count on you.”

“Are you done?” Beelzebub asked, sending a fly buzzing around Zephyre’s face. “Can we be done now? Earth sucks.”

And as much as Zephyre hated it, they couldn’t help but agree with their sentiment.

-

Back in Hell, Dia had access to technology that, while slow and annoying to work with, did its job. Here on earth? All she had was whatever could be written on paper. No scratched and glitchy monitors. No possessed circuit boards. No demonic cameras spying on her charge’s every move. Just some paper, a clipboard, and a pen.

She’d resorted to some of the old methods in the technology’s absence. The runes and sigils were rudimentary, but they did their job. She set them up in stages throughout the town in her first week. The strongest ones closest to the boy in the places he frequented the most. The weaker ones surrounding the whole of Tadfield to notify her of any goings-on. The protective ones around her own house, and around her office at Tadfield Primary. Alarms outside of the homes of the other agents.

She put them up fully expecting for them to remain silent, save for the ones with Crowley’s name scratched right in the centre. Those ones she put on mute. At the very least so she didn’t have to get notifications of all of the dumb things he did with his power. She’d seen some of the records in that office, the day she first got her assignments. The box of receipts went up to her waist, with the number 736 scrawled on the side in sharpie.

_18.08.11 2109 Conjured Wine bottle (750mL)_

_18.08.11 2109 Conjured Wine glass_

_18.08.11 2109 Conjured Wine glass_

_18.08.11 2113 Vanished Wine (30mL)_

Satan only knew why they bothered keeping all of them, but she was told she had to. She hadn’t muted the sigils at first, but 17 pieces of completely useless receipts had shown up inside her pocket within the first half-hour, and she really couldn’t be bothered with it. The only receipts she was meant to send Downstairs were the dodgy ones, but it wasn’t like he did anything dodgy to send. She could make it up if she needed.

It had been three weeks of absolutely nothing when she got a receipt. This one was different from Crowley’s, even at first glance. The paper was crispy and burnt, parts of it flaking off in Dia’s hand before she could even read it.

_19.09.03 1832 Stormcloud diverted_

“ _Goddammit_ ,” was her first thought. One of the sigils hadn’t muted properly. Just her luck, and now she’d have to go around to all of them to check. The paper was so fragile that she let it flutter to the ground and kicked it away. After all, it wasn’t as if it was important.

Three days later, another receipt appeared. 

_19.09.06 1028 Gate unlocked_

Dia groaned and tore the paper. She put her hands back into her pockets.

_19.09.06 1028 Branch vanished_

_19.09.06 1028 Branch vanished_

_19.09.06 1029 Conjured leaves (157 units)_

Those, too, went in the bin. She’d seen Crowley’s garden when she’d put up the sigils. What a loser, she thought. He’s doing yard work.

Five minutes later, another one appeared. Dia didn’t even look at it, just crushed it to dust in her fingers.

_19.09.06 1032 Bruise healed_

_19.09.06 1033 Heart rate calmed (74 bpm)_

_19.09.06 1041 Classroom door unlocked (Room 7)_

-

Dog was almost there, Adam could feel it. He’d learned how to sit and lie down and roll over and speak. Adam especially liked the speak trick, because it almost sounded like his name sometimes. Like if Dog’s voice box was just slightly different, they could talk to one another. Tell each other secrets and laugh at their stories. He felt like Dog had some truly excellent stories from before they found each other.

Adam told Dog a lot of his stories. He wasn’t properly grounded, not anymore, but his parents had started wanting him back home earlier, not letting him out after school as much, wanting him to carry an old flip phone just in case. They said it was good for safety, but he got a strange feeling that it wasn’t his safety they were concerned about. So, Adam spent more time at home, with Dog, telling Dog his stories.

Adam was currently teaching Dog how to high-five. He’d seen it in a comic that he’d bought at the corner store, and it was so cool that he knew he’d have to teach Dog. It was getting harder to teach him new tricks, but Adam figured that it was because his brain was so full of old tricks that it couldn’t fit in many newer ones. So they’d practised for a bit and given up.

Adam had lain down in his favourite nook of the garden. It was right near the end, as far away from the house as you could get, and behind one of the oak trees. Here, the grass was soft, but the great big trees from over the hedge offered a pleasant shade in the summertime. Dog lay beside him, stretched out on his back, pressing against his leg. Adam had just finished letting Dog know about the chickens Pepper’s mum had hatched.

“She says that we can come to visit them and give them hugs, but I don’t see how anyone would want to hug a chicken. I mean, they aren’t pets! Even if Pepper’s mum says so.” He shifted onto his side and gave Dog a scratch on the belly. “Wensleydale agrees with me. He said that you mustn’t ever hurt your pets, and so chickens can’t be pets because you have to hurt them before you eat them. I don’t think Brian’s decided yet.” Dog huffed out a little breath, and Adam understood. He also thought that Wensleydale was right.

He lay there for a little while, just thinking. He opened his mouth to continue speaking to tell Dog another story from school today. Wensleydale had shown him a book in the library about chickens, and all sorts of cool little science facts about them. It had been a rather wonderful way to share a lunchtime.

“He said that there’s a little clock inside of everything that’s alive, inside its brain. Even you, Dog! And all the plants and bugs and everything. He said it’s almost like magic but it’s better than magic. It’s science!” He laughed, smile so wide that his cheeks hurt, and scratched all over Dog’s tummy and head and ears and back. Dog made funny little yelping noises, tongue waggling, and kept trying to lick Adam’s hands. He giggled at the wonky expression on Dog’s face.

The end of the story wasn’t very nice. Wensley had left early to finish his homework, so Adam had gone to the playground. Brian was sick that day and Pepper was debating with some of the girls about pink being anyone’s colour by the climbing wall, and so he’d been alone.

There was a lump in his throat that wasn’t there before. He suddenly had the impulse to check behind him into the trees to see if he was being watched.

“Dog, I’m going to tell you the rest of my story, but you must promise that you won’t go telling anyone.” He held Dog’s tiny head in his hands, and said the words carefully and deliberately, just like he had when he’d told Dog not to leave the garden, or he’d have to leave too. Like if he said the words carefully enough it would make them true. Dog slowly blinked up at him with big dark eyes.

“After I went to the playground, Harry chased me into the garden.” There was a funny feeling in his chest as he told Dog the rest of his story. It made him want to get up and run and never look back. It made him want to hide in a little ball and never speak until his body atrophied into the earth. It made him want to scream.

“I don’t think he meant to chase me there, but the gate was unlocked, and I thought if I went in then he wouldn’t follow me. But he did. He pushed me into the compost heap and told me to leave him alone. But I wasn’t doing anything! You have to believe me, Dog, I didn’t do anything to him. He just hates me…” Adam sniffed, and a single tear tracked down his cheek.

“He told me that I was making bad things happen and I needed to stop or else he would tell mum and dad and they’d send me away. I don’t know what he means!” he wailed. Adam was hiccoughing now, trying to stop hot tears from spilling down his face. He remembered the stink of the rotting plants and the bugs that crawled up his shirt and the twisted look on Harry’s face. Dog tried to lick his face, but Adam turned away, crumbling into himself.

“I don’t want to tell mum and dad because… because…” He was crying now, snot dripping from his nose and his face blotchy and sore. Dog whined, trying to climb onto his lap. Adam finally relented, and encircled Dog in his arms in a miserable hug. Dog rested his little chin on Adam’s shoulder, and it made Adam feel like he understood.

“I don’t want to tell them because I think it might be true,” he whispered. He could feel Dog’s tiny little heart against his palm, and he hated knowing that it was there.

The breeze had picked up, but he only noticed the biting chill against his arm now as he held Dog. They sat together for a long while. Adam’s lips were tingly from crying and his face felt hot and flushed. He knew that there was nothing that Dog could do to make him feel better, but just having him inside his arms helped ground him.

“I promise that I won’t let anything happen. To anyone. Not to Wensley, or Pepper, or Brian. Or even Harry.” It felt good to say it out loud. Adam always found that if he said what he meant that life would go a little bit smoother.

-

One thing that people who are not employed in the field of education like to joke is that teachers have the best jobs because they don’t have to work on holidays or weekends, and only spend a small time actually teaching. This is, clearly, false. In fact, it was laughably untrue. For one, any time spent not actually teaching is used getting ready for the next class. There was also report writing, homework marking, extracurricular activities, and pointless staff meetings and training. Crowley was not unaware of this fact when he chose to be the one to go onto the battlefield, but it was becoming increasingly and painfully obvious to him with every passing second.

Today he was bent over the tiny desks in Room 7 helping Jennifer, the teacher he assisted for, grade homework. Each student in their class was issued a math worksheet, a reading and writing activity, a book to read each week, and a weekly spelling list. This was all very helpful stuff, and very good for the child, but absolute hell on wheels for the poor teacher’s assistant who had to sit down with a red pen and sticker sheet, and write comments that were technically true, but in the most encouraging tone possible.

As one could imagine, this was not Crowley’s strong suit. But, for as long as the only other option was planning an “ _interactive musical sing-and-dance lesson, Anthony_!”, Crowley would take the marking. He flipped over the page he was currently working on and sighed.

“Hey Jen!” he said, huffing a laugh under his breath. “This kid wrote, and I’m quoting, ‘frulse’ for every single answer on the reading quiz. Can I give him full marks? I mean he _technically_ got the answer every time…”

Jennifer stopped mid-hop on the mat and started laughing. Crowley shook his head with a grin and held the paper out.

“I mean, see for yourself!”

“It looks almost correct?” Jennifer said, taking the paper from his hand. “But don’t give him any points for this, Anthony. He’ll just do it again, and then all the other kids will do it and they’ll never take it seriously. Sarah told me the other day how some kids are doing it in her class. Must be one of their playground jokes.”

“But wouldn’t it be great?” Crowley asked, clicking his pen. “I think they’ve gotta learn to bend the rules at least a _little_ …”

“Not in homework!” Jennifer mock-admonished and placed the paper on his desk. Crowley held his hands up in mock surrender and went back to the papers. Privately he was impressed with the kid. It was pretty funny, even if it wasn’t his idea originally, and enough of a low-grade stupidity that he was almost proud.

_Close, but not quite :)_ he wrote in scratchy red ink.

From the back of the classroom, Jennifer groaned.

“Can you go and get the laminator? I think our one’s gone missing.”

“Do we really need a laminator?” Crowley asked, already putting down his marking to go. He pretended to stretch out his back for a second and made sure to leave the cap of his marking pen unclicked. Even the adult-sized chairs seemed tiny at this school, and he was sure it was a nightmare for anyone with a human amount of bones in their back. “Why not just let the paper live?” He raised his eyebrows at Jennifer’s unimpressed face. “I’m just saying.”

“Please just go and get the laminator, Anthony. I think the student-teacher from Room 6 keeps stealing it.”

“Right away, ma’am,” he said, saluting as he sauntered out the door.

Inside the staffroom, it was quiet. This wasn’t unusual for 5 pm on a Friday, as most of the teachers and staff had fled to their own homes after being surrounded by hundreds of children for a whole week. Even Aziraphale had left, dutifully locking up the office and turning off the computers at the wall. Crowley hummed absentmindedly to himself as he looked for the key to the storage room. It was in one of the garbage drawers, hiding amongst the staplers and blutack. At least, it normally was. He couldn’t find it, and his humming stopped, and he checked a few other drawers. 

Someone cleared their throat, and he looked up.

“Have you seen the storage room keys anywhere?” he asked, peering through his glasses at the person. They were standing beside the doors to the playground and out of the office, hidden in the shade beside the brightly lit ranch sliders. Crowley could barely make out more than an outline as he tried to see through his darkened lenses and the high contrast. The person said nothing but moved over to the storage room. They pushed it open, and Crowley stepped quickly to join them.

“Thanks for that, I didn’t realise it was open…”

Behind the unassuming white-paint door was not a set of shelves, filled with books and pencils and a handily placed laminator. The door slammed shut behind him, and a wall of hot air crashed into him. The heat emanating from the walls made Crowley’s skin crawl in a way he wished was unfamiliar to him. Below them, an intricate design of circle and sigils chalked onto the carpet, glowed with a dark light.

The figure in front of him turned, and Crowley gaped.

“Diana?” he said, and the person scowled.

“It’s Dia,” she said, and bile rose in Crowley’s throat when he spoke.

“What’s happening?” he asked, and Dia gestured around them with a look that said _can’t you tell?_ Crowley resisted the urge to step away and out of the room, to turn and run, and instead faced her head-on.

“This is an interrogation,” she said, and she seemed so bored of threatening Crowley that he was almost insulted.

“An interrogation about what? And who are you really? Because you sure as hell are not just a student-teacher.”

“And neither are you, Crowley,” Dia sneered. “You really, honestly think that we watched you pack up and head off to shitty little Tadfield and wouldn’t do anything about it?”

Crowley blinked and tried his very best not to look like he had been thinking that, at least a little. He jammed his hands in his pockets and shook his head.

“Actually, it’s… uh… part of my new strategy. Influence the kids. Give this whole town a new paint job of low-grade evil. In fact, just yesterday, I…”

Dia cut him off with a sharp, keening laugh.

“That’s bullshit! That is so hilarious, Crowley, that you’d think we’d buy that for a minute. You’ve been working with the enemy for years now. Oh, don’t give me that look!” she scoffed. “We’ve known the whole time.”

“Then why haven’t you done anything? That isn’t our style.”

“First of all, don’t try any of that ‘our style’ stuff with me. Second, why do you think we’d leave you alone? You’re _useful_ , you keep the agent from actually doing his job.”

_What’s the agent_? Crowley thought, and a pit opened in his stomach when he realised.

“So why tell me this now?” Crowley asked, avoiding mentioning Aziraphale any further. The more he could keep him out of this conversation, the safer their plan would be. “And what are you doing here?”

“We’re here to carry out the Plan,” Dia said.

“That Plan has already failed.”

“That’s what you think. But you don’t know the whole story.” Crowley manifested a tire iron in his grip, and Dia smirked. “You’ve been away for too long. Time’s a’ changing old man. Keep up.”

Crowley growled and launched forward. With a single laugh and a click of her fingers, Dia disappeared.

Crowley looked around the supply room. The laminator sat on the shelf, right beside the sheets and spare chalkboard dusters. The door behind him gently swung shut onto its hinges.

-

Adam used to have really nice dreams. He did, truly. If you’d asked him a year ago, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you a single time he’d ever had a nightmare. Ever woken up with heaving breaths and wide eyes. They’d always been pleasant. Nonsensical, but pleasant. Full of playing in the woods and eating ice cream and flying through the sky.

Pepper had told him to write them down a few summers ago. Her mother, she’d said, had taught her all about dreams and what they mean, and she was determined to get some practice in herself. She’d given all of the Them a little flip notebook and a pencil to write down all the things they saw when they were asleep, and she would tell them what it all meant. And so, he did.

She’d lug her massive dream-decoding book to the hideout and go through all of the different elements of the dreams. Adam privately thought that all of the meanings sounded a little bit the same, but it was always nice for her to read through all of the nice things he was meant to experience in the future.

“But how can dreams have meaning?” Brian asked when they first started.

“It’s about your _subconscious_ ,” Pepper said. Wensleydale hummed thoughtfully.

“What’s that?” Adam asked.

“It’s like a little voice in the back of your head telling you not to do stuff,” Wensley said. He pushed his glasses further up onto his nose when he talked. “Mother says to listen to it, because it tells you if something is the right thing to do.”

This made sense to Adam. He often heard voices in his head that told him to do stuff.

“But what if the voice says to do something that isn’t right? Like to go out and play instead of doing homework?” Adam asked.

“Mine always does that,” Brain said.

“Sometimes it’s not right,” Wensley said, with a knowing tilt of his head. “It needs to learn what right and wrong is. But everyone needs to do that.”

“Sounds boring to me,” Brian said. Adam hummed but wasn’t really paying attention anymore. That was fine then, if the voices in his head said to do bad things. Because he was only a kid. He was still learning what was right and wrong.

“So how does your subconscious tell you stuff in your dreams?” Adam asked. Perhaps if he figured that out, he could help speed his subconscious up.

“The human brain is very complicated,” Pepper said.

“Yes. It is,” Wensleydale agreed. That meant that they didn’t know. Adam was fine with that.

He visited Pepper’s house a few days later, dutifully knocking on the door with notebook in hand.

“Hello? Who’s there!” he heard a voice call out. The door opened lazily, and Pepper’s mum blinked down at Adam. She looked at him like his dad when he’d just woken up – like she needed glasses, but she couldn’t find them on the nightstand.

“Hello Mrs Moonchild, I’m here to see Pepper,” he said with a bright smile. Pepper’s mum was a little odd, but she was nice enough to him whenever he came around.

“Pepper! Your friend is here!” she called out back into the house, and patted Adam on the shoulder. “Come on in, honey. Let me cleanse your energies.”

“Um, alright,” Adam said.

“Do you know your birth chart?” she mumbled, digging through a box on the bookshelf. “Or maybe your rising will be enough. I need to pick the right crystals…” Adam tapped his feet as he waited, peering into the dim interior. The windows were covered in thin shawls that made the air warm and musty.

“It’s alright mum, I’ll do it,” Pepper said, appearing suddenly from within the house.

“Here!” Pepper’s mother bolted upright, clutching a small silver stone in between her fingers. “Selenite, for cleansing auras!” Pepper sighed loudly from behind her, but she ignored her daughter and closed her eyes.

She waved the stone around Adam. First his face, and then his shoulders and torso. To anyone watching, and especially to Pepper herself, these movements looked random and haphazard. To Adam, they made his skin crawl. He found a strange thought popping into his head, that she was _doing it wrong, the sigils were meant to be cleaner…_

“There!” she said, opening her eyes and making a flourish with her hands. “Do you feel cleansed?”

“Yes, mum, he does. Come on, Adam, let’s go,” Pepper said pulling him in by his arm. The places on his skin that had been passed over by the crystal burned when she touched them.

Upstairs was significantly brighter than the ground floor. It was only a small area, just a landing, a toilet, and the door to Pepper’s room. There were no coverings on the walls and no candles or statues piled on the table by the window. The air was clearer here, and it became easier to breathe with every step he took up the stairs.

The door to Pepper’s room was cracked open. Adam could see the light gently shining out from the gap. Pepper pushed the door open.

It was a truly idyllic room for any child to have. The ceiling was wooden and angled, with a large window at the far end. Instead of books with funny eyes on the cover, there were piles of notebooks, a science book Wensleydale had recommended to them, and a set of karate belts hanging up on the wall. Pepper had started martial arts three years ago and was proud of the progress she’d made.

“Sorry about her,” Pepper said, quickly closing the door as Adam stepped over the threshold. “I told her you also don’t believe in the crystal stuff but she got to the door first.”

“No. It’s okay. She was just… being nice. In her own way.” Pepper shrugged.

“Did you bring the notebook?”

Adam held it up with a grin. “Right here.”

“Sit here, I’ll get the book,” Pepper said, pointing to the chair sat at the desk. The cushion on it was worn, but it was comfortable. Pepper dropped the book onto the bed and sat down next to it. It was old, with a cracked leather that had once been dyed a deep purple. It was the kind of book that made Adam believe in what it had to say. No matter how much his father reminded him that it was all nonsense.

“So, what happened in your first dream?” Pepper asked. Adam flipped open the notebook and began to read.

They spent over an hour together that day, poring through all the different things Adam dreamed. It was much more complicated than he’d realised it was going to be. Dreams were complicated, Pepper said. Needed to be looked at carefully.

They’d all been nice things, that day. Pleasant dreams of good things that had nice meanings. He missed those dreams. He didn’t have nice ones anymore.

The worst part of these new horrible dreams, he decided, was that they weren’t even dreams. They were just… flashes of images and moments. There was no rhyme or reason to what he saw, just the bone-deep anxiety that came with the impossibly dark light and burning heat. He spent hours awake each night once he woke up, lying stock still and trying desperately not to alert anything to his distress. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to move from his bed, to get his parents, to even turn the light on. He would just lie there, shaking, until the light started creeping up over the horizon.

The next night, when his nightmares woke him up shivering, he forced himself to reach out and grab the spiral notebook sitting on the bedside table. He’d found it hidden at the back of his bookshelf, and realised he’d completely forgotten its existence. The force of will it took to overcome the bile in his throat and move his arms was so intense the fingernails on his left-hand broke flesh, but it was worth the effort once he had his fingers around the worn paper. The pencil tucked into the spirals almost fell out with how much his hand was shaking.

_Red dark tall. Hot sour dark. Smoke. Light?_

He didn’t fall asleep again that night. But, with the pencil clutched tightly in his hand, he felt the taut coils of muscle in his back begin to loosen.

_Dark smell purple burnt. Pain pain pain pain pain_

_Tall spark fire dark. Circle???? Big_

_Nothing_

_alone_

He didn’t go to Pepper straight away. He waited a week to see if the nightmares would pass. He felt like this might have been what Harry had meant, and he didn’t want to pass his bad dreams on to Pepper. It wasn’t until Mr Ashtoreth said something that he finally worked up the courage to ask Pepper to use her book again.

“You alright, kid?”

The question startled Adam, who blinked up at the source of the noise. They’d been doing a spelling exercise before lunch and had finished early. However, instead of handing it in, he’d rested his chin on his hand for just a moment…

“What?” he said, blinking heavily.

“It’s lunchtime.”

That woke Adam up. He bolted upright, face reddening as he took in the empty tables.

“Oh… er…”

“It’s okay, kiddo, take your time.”

“I’m sorry…” Adam mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I just…” He trailed off, unsure of how to frame his predicament. Only babies worried about bad dreams. And Adam was not a baby. He was an almost-12-year-old boy.

“Haven’t been sleeping well?” Mr Ashtoreth volunteered, and Adam smiled guiltily up at him. “It’s alright. Happens to the best of us sometimes.”

“I don’t usually… I mean, it’s only sometimes, and I…” Mr Ashtoreth cut him off, pulling out the seat next to him and sitting down. Adam was struck suddenly with a vision of a snake coiling around a tree.

“Listen, Adam.” Adam listened. “Everyone has trouble sleeping sometimes. Sometimes we just have to hold on until the good dreams come back.”

“I miss the good dreams,” Adam mumbled and then realised what he said. Mr Ashtoreth chuckled.

“They’ll be back again, I promise.” Adam knew, logically, that there was no way that Mr Ashtoreth could possibly promise this. There was nothing in the words he spoke or the way he spoke them that changed anything about his situation. Despite this, he felt a little better.

“Thank you for not being angry about me falling asleep. I promise I won’t do it again.”

Mr Ashtoreth laughed and patted Adam’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. Now, go eat your lunch. There’s still some time left.”

-

Aziraphale had not received a single piece of communication from Heaven in over a month. Once Gabriel’s perfectly tailored coat had left his store, there had been radio silence. No one had tried to stop him from organising the move to Tadfield with Crowley, no one had stopped him from working at Adam’s school. Everything seemed to be going perfectly according to Plan.

Aziraphale didn’t trust it. And he decided that, until he got proof that he could, he wasn’t going to relax.

There wasn’t anything he could do to get information about the other side. They were bad enough at cooperating when they were meant to, so it would be foolish to even waste energy trying. So he’d need to figure out what his own side’s Plan was. Somehow.

His Plan began in the school office. Neither him, nor the lovely young woman he worked with called Daisy, had their own private workspace. It turns out that Primary schools aren’t exactly rolling in it, and so space was utilised fully. The front office of Tadfield Primary was as nice of an office as you could hope to work in.

A large houseplant sat in the corner, a couple of large chairs flanking it on either side. There was a coffee table with the school newsletter and some National Geographics. The glass doors were automatic sliding ones, which had delighted Aziraphale to no end and pissed Crowley off an inordinate amount. Aziraphale could see the turf and a block of classrooms from where he sat at the front computer. If he moved to the side desk, he could see onto the playground and the second block of classrooms. The whole school was visible from the office.

Of course, to a normal human, it wasn’t. It could hardly be expected that a regular pair of eyes could see into the Room Four cloak bay, which angled onto the field and away from the office. A regular pair of eyes shouldn’t have been able to see the Gear Shed either, or the garden, both of which were hidden completely behind Rooms One and Two.

The office was empty by the time he got there. He always got there early, making sure there was plenty of time to check for any changes before the rest of the staff showed up. He sat down in his chair, stretched out his fingers, and closed his eyes.

He didn’t think of it as seeing. Seeing was something too small, too simple for what this was. To see something was to notice the shapes and outlines, to match your perception with what you were expecting to perceive. The human eyes could truly see in the same way that a duck could sing opera.

The school looked worn. Not just from the constant movement of children and adults through the classrooms and pathways every day, but also from the energy of their thoughts, the force of their emotions. He could see the aching strain the stress of testing put on the desks in the higher level’s classrooms. He could see the never-ending batteries of the children that barrelled through the playground.

He could see the trails of negative light that Crowley had left in his movement through the school. He could see his own angelic energy, too. They were such polar opposites, those lights. One so bright it almost blinded him to look at, the other so dark that it was impossible to look directly at it. He forced himself to look, searching for anything that he knew wasn’t his. If he could spot a trail, he could follow it to its source.

He examined the area around the staff room and offices. Those parts hurt the most to look at. It was where he spent most of his time at the school and it burned bright and cold. One area, the storage room beside the library, burned hotter than the rest. 

In his mind’s eye he brought himself closer to the room. It was unassuming at first glance. There were shelves and drawers and sliding storage units for the reading books. It seemed deeply familiar, as if it were part of his own bookshop back in Soho. He tried to inspect it closer, check for anything unusual, but a sharp stabbing pain behind his eyes forced him to open them with a start.

He frowned. Closed his eyes. Tried again.

It was easier the second time, but not by much. The light trails, the tell-tale sign of divine or occult movement, was almost blinding. It was so dense, so full of movement and traffic, that he couldn’t tell if it was bright, or so deep and impossible that it just seemed light. And that… that was more puzzling than he would like it to be.

The sliding doors opened with a shush, startling Aziraphale so much that his flinch knocked the cup of tea onto the floor.

“Morning, Ezra, how are you doing this fine- Oh my god!” Daisy yelled, rushing over to help. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you!” She scanned the room for something to mop up the tea.

“It’s alright, don’t worry dear, you didn’t mean to. I was just doing some meditation before the day started.” He waited until her back was turned as she almost threw her bag onto the other desk and created a tea towel.

“Here we are!” he said and pulled it out with a flourish to illustrate its previous position from under the desk. 

“Why do you keep a tea towel in the office?” Daisy asked, relieved that she didn’t have to go searching for one.

“In case of spills, my dear,” Aziraphale said, delicately patting at the tea on his coat. It was coming off far easier than it should have, but Daisy wasn’t paying attention to that. She smiled at Aziraphale gratefully, before setting up the office for the day.

“I’ll try to come in quieter next time. You know, meditation before work doesn’t sound like a bad idea…”

“It can be quite relaxing,” Aziraphale said. This morning’s, however, had been anything but. There was something wrong with the storage closet. It rested in his brain like a well-trodden path, yet he couldn’t remember a single time he’d ever needed to step foot in there. He’d need to investigate.

-

So, here was the thing. Demons didn’t like children. They liked children in an abstract way, in a way that appreciated how annoying and expensive they were to deal with. In a way that appreciated every single supermarket meltdown and toy aisle drama for the fun of it. They were most certainly not supposed to like children in a way that thought their weird logic was endearing, or their minuscule and unimportant accomplishments had any actual value in the grand scheme of things.

No, demons were meant to secretly despise children like every other grownup on earth. But, predictably, Crowley was not like other demons.

He’d always had a little bit of a soft spot for kids. He was loathe to admit it, even to Aziraphale. When he had mentioned the fact some months ago, Crowley had scoffed and turned pink.

“If I support their antics it makes life harder for everyone around them, angel, obviously,” he’d said. It sounded weak to even his own ears, but Aziraphale had nodded thoughtfully and left it. Which was for the best. It wouldn’t do to have a demon going around caring about children.

That was changing with every day Crowley spent working at this blasted school. Children were so surprisingly human. He’d forgotten, after so long of working amongst the grit and dirt of the grownup world. He’d grown to see them, as many adults did, as a different breed of human altogether. Human Lite, perhaps, or a beta version. He was very quickly reminded how wrong this assumption was. Just because children hadn’t experienced that much of the world, it didn’t mean that their experience itself was somehow limited.

Hell, if three children and an Antichrist could divert the apocalypse, they had to be made of much stronger stuff than anyone gave them credit for.

Despite the positive nature of this revelation, it was not good news for Crowley. Try as he might, he always managed to find himself caring deeply for those he was assigned to. It had happened with Eve and her tenacious thirst for knowledge. It had happened shockingly quickly with Aziraphale. And now it was happening all over again with Adam.

Not the Antichrist. Not their charge. Not the key to the end of the world. He was just Adam. And something was up with him.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley said one evening. They were doing something they’d recently made a tradition of sorts. Sitting on the porch with a drink and looking up at the stars. Aziraphale had conjured up the most beautiful swinging seat that was perfectly sized for their porch. The light from the kitchen was soft enough not to disturb the gentle peace that settled over the pair, nor to dampen the bright lights from the stars. You could see the whole universe from their little seat.

It frightened Crowley, the openness of the sky. He’d been one of the creators of the galaxies he and Aziraphale were so fond of sitting in peaceful existence with. They served as a reminder of what he’d lost. What he wouldn’t ever be allowed to have. There was a purpose behind the snakeskin that he’d adopted; the undergrowth was a safety blanket from the vastness of the universe. As long as he could feel the earth beneath him, he was protected.

He didn’t fly, either. His wings were strong and powerful, but he hadn’t used them in millennia. Every time he tried, he could feel the same low swoop in his stomach, the weightlessness in his limbs, the panic of being too far from stable ground. His wings had burned with righteous fire as he fell, and the rip of wind along his feathers felt the same.

Sitting here, next to Aziraphale, was the complete opposite feeling. The warmth Aziraphale radiated reminded him so completely of the ground just beneath him and the air pressing down on his shoulders. And here, in their little seat, he could feel that warmth clearer than ever. It was just large enough for two. The blankets that Aziraphale had brought in from the cottage made a buffer around them, pushing them closer together until their arms were pressed firm.

“Yes?” said Aziraphale.

Crowley sipped his wine. It was a remarkably nice one, made with the care and love of someone who has dedicated their whole life to their craft. That love added a depth to it, a richness that a human wouldn’t have been able to taste. It was a strangely familiar one to Crowley.

“The… Adam. He’s…” And, for the life of him, Crowley didn’t know how to phrase the deep concern he felt for him.

“Hmm?” Aziraphale murmured. Crowley didn’t answer him.

“Is something wrong? Has he… did something happen?” Aziraphale asked, turning to face Crowley. The light was dim enough for Aziraphale’s gaze to go soft and unfocused on Crowley’s face. He was thankful for that buffer, and he still didn’t know what to say.

“He isn’t sleeping well,” he said. That didn’t feel enough for the concern that settled behind his eyes. He closed them, but he could feel Aziraphale’s liquid gaze along the side of his face. Feel that dull heat of fondness that Aziraphale never quite realised he put out.

“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” he asked, and Crowley hated that it was true. He hated the idea that the serpent of Eden could have become so attached to a human, least of all a human child. There was something about humanity that drew him. And, most of all, he hated that the angel knew it was true.

He was silent, and Aziraphale let him sit in his thoughts. He was allowed to care, and he recognised that this was a luxury that Crowley didn’t have.

“He’s our assignment, angel, of course I don’t want him to be bloody miserable. It doesn’t mean that I… that…”

“We want to make sure he’s okay. That’s the whole reason we’re here, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said. The way he framed it gave Crowley an out. He was so good like that, seeing the parts of Crowley that were too sore to talk about and letting him leave them be. It was a verbal dance they were both familiar with.

_I wish I didn’t care_ , Crowley thought. _But I do_.

“Not… not the _only_ reason we’re here,” he said, and didn’t look at Aziraphale. They were already so close, the pain of baring his soul was stronger than ever. Aziraphale rested a soft hand on his cheek and pressed a warm kiss to his temple. He felt the breath freeze in his lungs.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale whispered, and Crowley frowned.

“What for?” he asked. There were so many things that he could thank Aziraphale for. His patience, his kindness, his strength and everything he had done to become his own person. And what was there possibly to thank Crowley for?

He said, “for giving me the confidence to be here.”

He said, “for forgiving me for the times I’ve done wrong by you.”

He said, “for letting me sit in your company.”

“Aziraphale!” Crowley said, and the consonants choked in his mouth. He wished he deserved the softness in Aziraphale’s voice. How could he not see that none of that was Crowley’s doing?

Aziraphale held his head with both hands and pressed his forehead to Crowley’s. Crowley could feel his breath. Angels didn’t need to breathe. Aziraphale did anyway.

Aziraphale was immensely powerful. He was the guardian of Eden, the Principality of the Eastern Gate, the protective eye over the human race. He had been on earth for six millennia, and existed beyond it for longer. He could change reality if he so chose. He could create things from nothing. He had stopped the end of the world.

Looking into his eyes, Crowley was terrified.

“We’re in this together,” Aziraphale said with all the love in his heart. “We’re on our side, remember?”

“I’m glad it’s with you,” Crowley whispered. Aziraphale tilted his head back to gaze up at the stars and dropped his hands from his face onto his knees. Crowley’s fingers itched.

“Can you… help him out? So he’s alright?”

Aziraphale nodded and settled back down beside Crowley. He placed a hand delicately on the blankets, and Crowley reached out to intertwine their fingers.

-

“This is… not the best possible outcome,” Gabriel said, and Beelzebub pinched the bridge of their nose beside him.

“I said it wouldn’t be that eazy,” they muttered. “Yet he decided that it waz.”

There had been three staff meetings in the months since the two new agents had come to earth. All had been attended by upper management. They were technically meant to have two a month, but there was no way that Zephyre was going to try anymore when Dia had explicitly told them that they weren’t going to come. As long as they both got their work got done, everyone was happy. Zephyre had come to accept that status quo.

They were reading through the file of Adam’s activities. Once Dia had realised that the random receipts weren’t from Crowley, she’d tried her best to keep a record of the originals. Of course, a demon’s best wasn’t the greatest effort, but there was a fair amount in the manilla.

“How long has this been going on for?” they asked. Dia scowled and kicked at the dirt.

“Like… a month. Maybe a bit more.” Her human voice minimised the vertigo-inducing effect, but it still made Zephyre’s blood boil to hear her be so lackadaisical about something so serious. They kept their mouth shut. Gabriel had already sent them a note about inappropriate ice blasts in the summer months.

“So, what does this mean for the… situation?” Gabriel asked Beelzebub. He didn’t like to admit the demonic nature of the boy.

“Our plan waz to create a new Antichrist, now that this one iz finished.” This made sense to Zephyre. The Great War had to be started somehow. “But we can’t do that if there iz already an Antichrist. So… we need to remove the boy.”

Dia barked out a laugh, smile cracked through the scales. “So this means I get to hunt him after all? Sweet!”

Gabriel paled. “What? No! No no no, you can’t hunt him. You just need to… safely return him to his birthplace. In one piece. Alive.” He turned to Beelzebub. If he wasn’t so disgusted by working this physically with one of the Lords of Hell already, he would have shaken them by the shoulders. “That was part of the deal, right? Right?”

Beelzebub turned to Dia. “He’z right. Unfortunately. No killing, no permanent injury. No maiming…” 

“Why does this always happen when I finally get a good case!”

“…you just need to tranzport him back to the Office. We deal with him there.” Gabriel smiled as if he didn’t know what they were implying. Zephyre wanted desperately to be able to voice their displeasure at this plan. There was no way that Heaven could possibly go along with it. They were the good guys. And good guys didn’t go around kidnapping children and recycling their souls.

“The good of the whole earth is at stake here. We must stick to the Plan, and this is how we can do it," Gabriel said. Zephyre understood. The Plan was the sole focus of Heaven. And if sticking to the Plan meant doing something a little unorthodox, it was for the greater good.

“So… just to be clear…” Dia said, holding her hands up placatingly, “all I gotta do is get this kid back Downstairs?”

“That’z about it.”

“And what next?”

Huh. Zephyre hadn’t thought about that. 

“You stay on earth. Do your work. Wait until the Plan goes into effect and then return to your sides.”

“What about the other agents?” Zephyre found themselves asking. They’d grown used to seeing Aziraphale around, and he was good at his job, for the most part. It would be good to have a partner on the ground.

“What other agentz?” Beelzebub asked, grinning with stained teeth. “After this there won’t be any other agentz. Too much trouble for what they’re worth.”

Zephyre looked to Gabriel to confirm this. He smiled apologetically and shrugged.

“They’re right. We need people in the field that we can trust. And, if you two manage to pull this thing off… earth isn’t so bad a place, once you get used to it.”

-

Adam visited the school office on Tuesday lunch time to collect a letter for his mother. The sliding doors swished open, and he tentatively stepped inside. An office is always an odd place for a school child to find themselves. In a world that is ruled by the child, the office is an uncomfortable reminder that their territory has a limit.

“Hello, Adam,” said Mr Fell, and Adam couldn’t shake the feeling he’d met him before.

“Hello, sir. I’m here to pick up a letter? For Deidre Young?”

“Oh, of course dear boy! Let me just… ah ha!” he said, revealing the letter with a dramatic flick of his wrist. Adam smiled politely.

“You’ll just have to sign this paper saying that you’ve taken the letter,” Mr Fell said, placing a clipboard down on the desk. “Now, let me find a pen…” He pantomimed searching for a pen, before winking at Adam and producing one from seemingly nowhere. It was odd, Adam thought, that the office assistant was doing magic tricks, but it was a pretty good one. And the pen was nice, heavy and silver. There were little wings on the side, which Adam thought were kind of cute.

“Here you go,” he said, and held it out.

“Thanks,” Adam said, and took the pen. It sparked in his hand, and he dropped it in shock. His fingers felt tingly where he had touched it, the skin pink.

“Are you alright?” Mr Fell asked, frowning.

“Yeah, I just… think you might’ve given me an electric shock,” he said, and stretched his fingers out. Mr Fell gave a tight laugh.

“Yes, that happens. Sometimes. Static electricity is an unpredictable thing.”

“Do you have another pen?” Adam asked, and Mr Fell held out another. This one was normal looking, just a blue ballpoint. He signed the clipboard.

“Thank you for the letter, sir,” Adam said, and turned to leave.

“You’re most welcome. Take care,” Mr Fell said. Adam gave a polite smile and left.

Aziraphale worried his lip and snapped the pen out of existence from the floor. That would hopefully be enough, he figured. Just a little blessing, so that nothing too big would change.

Later that night, Adam dropped his knife onto his plate with a clatter. The fingers on his left hand were pink and had started to go numb.

“Are you alright, darling?” Diedre asked, and Adam held out his hand.

“My fingers are sore,” he said, and Diedre frowned as she examined them. They looked raw, as if he’d been scrubbing at them for hours.

“Did you do something to your hand?” she asked, and Adam huffed.

“No, mum, I haven’t. They’re just sore.”

“Have you been playing in the woods today? It could be from a Virginia Creeper,” Arthur said. Diedre hummed in agreement. Adam frowned.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s like poison ivy from America, darling. It gives you a rash. Did you touch anything funny at the hideout?”

“No, I haven’t. I haven’t been since Saturday. We went to Brian’s house after school today.”

“What about at Brian’s?”

“We stayed inside. Did some homework and played with Desmond.” Desmond was a fat black cat that was almost as old as Brian. Wensleydale thought Desmond was brilliant because Adam had taught him to beg like a dog. And if Wensleydale thought Desmond was brilliant, then Adam agreed.

“Maybe he had something on him,” Diedre said, and Adam scoffed.

“Jeremy did say today that his cat needed to go to the vet recently,” Arthur said, not looking up from his newspaper.

“I don’t know, it doesn’t look like a bite…” Diedre said.

“Put some antiseptic on it and have a look in the morning.” Arthur finally looked up and peered over his glasses at Adam’s finger. “I’m sure it’ll be alright for tonight.”

“I’ll go get the kit,” Diedre said, finally releasing Adam’s hand. “Just hold on a tic and I’ll be right back.” She gave Adam a kiss on the forehead.

Adam studied his finger, while he waited for his mum. It had looked normal earlier, when he’d gotten home. There was a bad feeling forming in the back of his mouth as he examined it. Perhaps whatever was so wrong was finally catching up to him. He tried to push those thoughts down, as if he thought them loud enough his father could hear.

The nightmares were even worse that night. The lights were on in the hallway when he woke up from his first one, meaning his parents hadn’t even gone to bed yet. It would have to be around 10 o’clock at night. Adam’s legs shook, but he steeled himself enough to get up.

“What’re you still doing up, Adam?” Arthur asked as he tried to get to the kitchen without being spotted. He turned sheepishly.

“I just need a glass of water,” he said, and hoped that his voice didn’t shake too much. Arthur sighed, and came over to him.

“Have a good sleep, son,” he said, and patted his shoulder. Adam nodded.

“You too, dad.”

He waited until Arthur was firmly out of the lounge before he got his glass. His left hand was still sore, so he had to use his right to open the cupboard and get his drink. He gulped it down messily, spilling some on his pyjamas before hurriedly refilling it and returning to bed.

He made sure to get the notebook before he closed his eyes. It didn’t help.

-

Crowley didn’t need anything from the storage room. There were four days of school left before the term break, and the teachers of Tadfield Primary were on the verge of giving up proper lessons entirely in favour of games and movies. This term had been the longest of the year, and everyone was feeling the strain.

He had gone to the teacher’s lounge to have a cup of coffee. Usually, that would not be Crowley’s first choice of a pick-me-up drink, but he had the position of Adam’s teacher for a reason and couldn’t afford to lose it for something as silly as day drinking. Not that it would have any effect on him if he didn’t want it to. It just wasn’t a very good look.

It was a surprise, if Crowley was being honest, when he found himself opening the door to the storage room. He didn’t remember walking over in the first place. Instead, he remembered coming in and pressing a coffee capsule into the machine with the exhausted energy of a primary school teacher.

The room was very, very bright. That was the first sign that something was wrong. That sign was very quickly followed by other signs in the form of a very dark heat, the smell of hellfire and smoke, and the form of a very bored demon holding a clipboard.

“Hello, Crowley,” Dia said.

“What the fuck,” Crowley said, and manifested a tire iron.

“Not again with the bloody tire iron,” she said and tapped her clipboard as Crowley started swinging. The iron stopped existing in the same second that a circle of sigils on the ground started glowing. Crowley hit the end of whatever protective force now surrounded him, and swore low under his breath.

“What are you doing here?” Crowley snarled. Dia rolled her eyes and flipped the page on his clipboard.

The inside of the room was certainly much bigger than it was before on all sides. The walls seemed to breathe, contracting and expanding, but he couldn’t see them move. The floor under his feet was too warm, glowing from unrecognisable symbols and designs.

“We’re here to check on your progress with the Antichrist. Like last time. And all the times before that.” She looked at Crowley with a leavening stare. “Not that you’ll remember any of that.”

Crowley’s chest heaved as he stared at Dia, eyes wide. “What are you talking about? You’re a teacher here. I would know if you were a demon.”

Dia rolled her eyes. “Would you, though? You aren’t very observant. We’ve been keeping an eye on you this whole time, Crowley. Oh, don’t look so damn shocked! You do this every time you find out.”

“Every time?” Crowley asked, desperately searching through his mind to find any trace of memory that could explain whatever nonsense Hell had cooked up in front of him.

“Yeah, every time. You really didn’t think we’d leave you alone for this long, did you?” Crowley gitted his teeth. He had, if he was being honest.

“What do you want from me?” he asked. A small part of what used to be his soul felt like it already knew the answer.

“You’re doing everything we want already, Crowley,” she said, and Crowley felt those words drop deep in his stomach. “Keep the angel busy, make sure no one suspects anything, let the people in charge do their work. In other words, do absolutely nothing. You’re good at that, aren’t you? You’ll be fine.”

Crowley was not fine. With any of this. He was just about to open his mouth to loudly and aggressively make note of this when the door opened, and someone yelped. Dia, who Crowley was staring daggers through as best he could while on the back foot, dropped her jaw in shock and brandished the clipboard like a weapon.

“You shouldn’t be able to get in here!” she yelled, and curled a ball of hellfire in her left hand. Crowley glanced behind him. And there, amongst the identical demons and dark walls, was Aziraphale.

“Get out!” Crowley yelled as Dia threw the fireball. Aziraphale ducked, and the ball only just clipped the side of his jacket.

“Even if you wanted to stop the Great Plan, you couldn’t. It’s only a matter of time,” Dia said, spitting out the words with disgust. “You know, I knew you were so cowardly as to abandon your own side after everything you’ve done. Some demon you are.”

Crowley felt a hand close around his shoulder just as the light from the floor peaked with a flash that left him blinking and disoriented in the tiny storage room. He could feel Aziraphale’s hands on his face, could hear his voice babbling away, getting higher and faster and more concerned with every word. He blinked slowly as his glasses were gently pulled off his face.

“…but before we do, we need to… are you alright? Is everything ok, did she hurt you?”

Crowley’s head lolled on his shoulders, but he found focus in the icy blue of Aziraphale’s eyes.

“What… where are we?” he murmured, throat dry. He was sweating, and he didn’t know why.

“We’re in the storage room, Crowley, what do you mean ‘where are we?’”

“What? Why are we here? Why are… you in here?” His voice was slurred and disoriented, and Aziraphale felt a growing sense of realisation.

“Who was that, Crowley?” he asked.

Crowley furrowed his brows. “Who was what? It’s only us in here, angel.”

-

There was something magical about the start of the school holidays. School hasn’t yet become a distant memory, and the magic of sleeping in as long as you want hasn’t worn off either. There were no more difficult lessons or tests. Mum and Dad were way more likely to let you have ice cream every day. And, the favourite part of the holidays for the Them; spending every spare second at the hideout.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the third day of the holidays that they were able to make it to the hideout. Family trips, room cleaning forced by parents, and a good old rainy day had stopped them from taking their stuff out and making camp. If he was being honest, Adam wasn’t too mad about not being able to go. He’d secretly wanted to spend a day at home.

“Brian! Come on, we’re waiting!” Pepper yelled from her bike on the pavement. She had raced along to Adam and Wensleydale’s houses as soon as the clock struck nine on Monday morning. This was the time they’d all agreed on for starting their day of adventures.

“He’s just coming now, dear. You wait right there, and I’ll send him out in a minute,” Brian’s mother said, and closed the door. Pepper rolled her eyes and mouthed ‘ _how rude_ ’ to Adam. He giggled.

“You know, I was having a really nice dream and you lot woke me up,” Brian said, trudging down the steps. He really did look like he’d just rolled out of bed and onto the pavement. There was a little bit of toothpaste on his nose.

“What was it about?” Wensleydale asked.

“I was riding on a banana boat and I got to make ice cream flavours of whatever I wanted. It was brilliant,” Brian said, closing his eyes as if he could see it if he tried hard enough. Adam frowned. That didn’t sound like his kind of dreams. Brian’s made sense.

“Did you know that people spend two hours a night dreaming? Even if you don’t remember it,” Wensleydale said. “And scientists don’t even know why we do it! I read it in that book I was telling you about, Adam.”

“Of course, you’d know that,” Pepper said, staring at Brian as he put his lunch bag into Adam’s basket. She was practically frothing at the mouth to get going. “But did you know that if you dream about flying, it means you feel free? I bet you didn’t! It’s a fact, I learned it in my mother’s dream book.”

That also didn’t sound like his dreams, Adam thought. That one was a nice meaning.

The treehouse was covered in leaves and a few spiderwebs when they got to the forest. Wensleydale and Adam both hated spiders, so they hung around the branch seats while Pepper and Brian got as many of them out as they could.

The branch seats were one of the reasons Adam had suggested that they set up their hideout here in the first place. The tree swung low, only a few feet off the ground, and curved back up again. It created a perfect little divot to sit in, and the tree had slowly grown to create three more seats. It had been Wensleydale’s idea. He’d seen some pictures in the science magazine he liked of people making shapes out of growing trees. Every day for almost a week he and Adam would come out to the branch seats and sit there, placing as many spare boards and broken branches onto the divots as possible. Those were some of Adam’s fondest memories of the hideout, even though he would never say it.

Dog was their lookout in the forest. He was a good dog, even if he was sort of terrible at guarding the hideout. He would sniff around and chase bugs and creatures in the undergrowth, but he would never bark. Adam was glad of this. His mum didn’t like dogs who barked, and it was annoying to be interrupted in the middle of killing a dragon to save the trapped prince (Pepper never wanted to be the princess. She was always the dragon). He only ever barked when Adam was bored or looking for birds in the trees. He was the best little dog he could ever ask for.

Adam and Wensleydale sat in the branch seats, Pepper and Brain cleaned out the spiders, and Dog started barking.

“What is it, Dog? What have you found?” Wensleydale asked as Dog came running up to them. He bent down to scratch behind his ear. If Dog had a favourite (besides Adam), it was definitely Wensleydale.

“It’s probably another bird. I hope this one’s okay.”

“It’s alright if it isn’t,” Wensleydale said, directly to Dog. “It’s part of your nature to hunt birds. We still love you, even if you do kill birds sometimes.” Wensleydale had an interesting way of talking to Dog, like he was discussing the subject with him. Sometimes Dog would bark in response, and Wensleydale would nod his head thoughtfully and respond as if he had spoken. It was delightfully charming.

Dog kept barking. Not like he would if he found something interesting to sniff or wanted to intimidate the local cats. This barking was loud, harsh.

“What’s wrong? Dog, you have to show us what’s wrong,” Adam said, worry beginning to set into his throat.

Dog took off, speeding through the fallen leaves. His barking sounded funny as he found his way to whatever was causing it. It was deep and loud, and Adam could feel it in his chest. It reminded him of something from his dreams.

“Adam? Wensley? What’s going on?” he heard Pepper call out. “We’ve gotten rid of the spiders; you can come back!”

Adam ignored her and followed the path created by Dog’s movements. The barking was accompanied by deep growling now. He crested the small hill and saw Dog. 

He saw another figure, opposite him in the clearing. They were not alone in the forest.

At first glance, he would have called the figure human, but when he properly looked, he could tell that she wasn’t. She was almost human. There were scales on her face, massive ones that caught the light from between the leaves and distorted it unnaturally. Her arms, which were holding some sort of lighter or candle, stretched too long and bent too many times.

“Adam…” she hissed, and Adam could hear it over the barking and growling and distance. It threw him, made him stumble and lose his balance. It was a bad voice. One that could only bring pain. Adam never wanted to hear it again.

Dog raised his hackles at the voice, positioned directly between Adam and the creature. It was only now that Adam realised that it wasn’t his dog, not really. His fur was wiry, not the soft fluffiness that Adam was used to. He was bigger, that much was for sure, and he looked stronger. Like he could take off an arm with one bite. Adam was glad that he couldn’t see his face because he had no doubt that that would have changed as well.

“Bloody Hell Hound…” she, the creature, said. Adam blinked away the dizziness. It was as if the voice was coming from directly beside him, even though she was all the way on the other side of the clearing.

Another figure appeared behind her.

There was a funny feeling in the back of Adam’s head that he couldn’t shake. The figure seemed so normal, so familiar with its scales and too many bones, and Adam hadn’t found it in him to be truly afraid. Like this was something that he had seen already. The feeling intensified when the second figure appeared. This one was wearing dark clothes, so dark that Adam couldn’t see any of the details. It was like someone had taken an eraser to the physical reality of the figure and left the absence in its place. Their skin was dark as well but covered in smatterings of gold.

“What are you?” Adam said, and he wasn’t afraid. Just curious.

The tall one with the fire in her hands laughed. Adam could feel the roots of his teeth vibrate. Dog whimpered.

“You already know,” she said, and suddenly Adam did. The realisation dawned on him, and he could feel his limbs go weak with shock. The fire grew.

“Angels…”

“Almost.”

“Demons?”

“Bingo,” the tall one said, and laughed.

“You can choose to come with us Adam,” the other figure called out. “This can be easy for all of us. Come back home.”

Adam frowned. “What do you mean? I am home.”

“No,” they said, “your real home.”

“I know what you are,” Adam said, realising what was happening. He started retreating, quickly walking backwards. “You’re bad. I need to stay away from you. I’m not going with you!” 

The tall one laughed and split the fire into both of her hands. She broke out into a run, and Adam turned and bolted. Dog started barking and one of the people was laughing and the other was grunting with exertion and Adam ran.

“Adam! What is going on!” Pepper yelled as he got to the hideout. The rest of the Them were pale, holding sticks in their hands like baseball bats. “We were calling out. Are you alright?”

“How far away did you go?” Wensleydale asked. 

“We need to leave,” Adam yelled, picking up his backpack from where he had dropped it on the dirty ground.

“What are you on about?” Pepper asked, and the sound of Dog barking popped into existence with a whine. Not a second later, and the sound of feet in the undergrowth snapped into being.

“We need to get out of here,” Adam said, pulling Wensleydale to his feet. “Come on!”

“Adam, where are you?” called a singsong voice. Here in the hideout, his ears didn’t ring, but the sound made his knees weak.

“We can work things out together!” yelled the other voice.

“Let’s go,” Pepper said, and the Them ran.

The sound of blood pounding in Pepper’s ears was loud, but the noise of whatever was behind them was louder. There were the sounds of twigs snapping, branches breaking, footsteps in the leaves, breathing. Someone laughed. She had never been this scared, but also never been this far removed from her own terror. All she thought about was the blood pounding in her ears and the three other sets of feet running beside her.

Unluckily for their chasers, the Them were no strangers to the woods. Not even close. They’d grown up with the trees and knew the paths to take to get out the fastest.

“Come on!” Pepper yelled, and the trees broke open to reveal the empty air of the road. She ran past the threshold of the forest and the noise of the chase behind them cut off like a television put on mute. On the road in front of them was a car. Getting out of that car were two people. Except they weren’t people, not really. They were teachers.

“…followed it, I think they’ll come out here,” said Mr Ashtoreth, Year 6 teacher and Cool Teacher With Sunglasses.

“I do hope you’re right; I can’t See them at all, not after the…” Mr Fell, Weird Office Man Who Liked Magic Tricks That Weren’t Very Good said.

“You two!” Adam yelled, and Pepper couldn’t figure out why on earth he would do such a thing. “Why’re you here?”

Mr Ashtoreth whirled around, his shoulders getting there before his feet, and visibly relaxed.

“Oh, thank God you’re alright. You are alright, right?”

“I’m sure She had nothing to do with it,” Mr Fell murmured. Adam stomped up to them.

“Why did you not tell me?” he asked. Mr Fell wrung his hands like he was in a cartoon. This was completely in character, as far as Pepper knew.

“No time for that, get in the car,” Mr Ashtoreth said, gesturing wildly at the open doors.

“Mother says we’re not to get in vehicles with strangers, I won’t do it,” Wensleydale said. Mr Ashtoreth rolled his eyes but stopped himself halfway through. Pepper knew that look from her own face.

“You know us, we aren’t strangers. There’s no time, it isn’t safe here.”

“But why isn’t it safe here? There isn’t anything in the woods, it was probably just a boar, mother said there were a few wild ones in England. Now,” he said, turning to the rest of the Them, “I don’t know why we needed to run away from a silly little animal, but can’t we go back?”

Pepper was inclined to agree. All this running was really for nothing, in the end. And if she thought about it, she never saw anything. And the noises can’t have been that bad, couldn’t they. In fact, it was probably the noise of a boar after all…

“No!” cried Adam, and Pepper blinked herself back into reality.

“Adam, I think we’ll be fine,” Brian said. Pepper nodded in agreement.

“We aren’t little babies. We aren’t scared of a tiny baby boar,” Pepper said, turning her nose into the air. She thought it made her look clever and grown-up when she did that.

“Well, you should be scared of these creatures, they’re certainly worse than a stupid _boar_. The only reason they aren’t out here right now-“

“What he’s trying to say,” Mr Fell interrupted, and Mr Ashtoreth threw his hands up, “is that what was chasing you wasn’t an animal at all. Do you remember what it could be?”

Right, that was enough for Pepper to call it quits. Her weird office secretary from school was trying to tell them there was someone chasing them in the woods, and her other weird teacher was trying to abduct them.

“This is ridiculous,” she said, “come on Adam, let’s go.” If Adam agreed that it was stupid, then all of the Them would leave. Because Adam was the leader.

“It isn’t ridiculous, actually,” he said, and Pepper wanted to hit him. “They were demons.”

“There were two of them!?” Brain cried.

“Two of whom?” Wensleydale asked. Adam looked at Mr Fell for answers.

“Adam is right.” His voice went funny when he said that. It felt richer and heavier to listen to. Pepper was trying to figure out what was different when she remembered.

“Hey!” she said, pointing to Mr Ashtoreth. “Mr Ashtoreth isn’t your name at all. What was it… I can almost remember…”

“Crowley,” supplied Wensleydale. He was good like that, always remembering the little details.

“Right! Crowley. And you!” She turned to Mr Fell. He glanced at the ground sheepishly. “You have a different name too! Aziraphale!”

“Aziraphale,” said Wensleydale, a moment behind.

“Didn’t… weren’t there other ones?” Brian asked. Crowley opened his mouth to answer, but a crash from inside the forest interrupted him. The blood drained from his face, and he started backing towards the Bentley.

“No time for those questions, not here. We need to go.” The Them watched as Adam followed him to the car without question, Dog at his heels.

“What’re you waiting for? We need to go!” he said. The sounds in the forest got louder. Closer. Pepper got in the car.

“Where are we going?” Brain asked once they were on the road. They were definitely speeding. There was no way that the blur of the trees outside was from normal driving.

“The safest place we can get,” Crowley said. Images of the airbase flittered across Pepper’s mind. A safe house, like in the movies. A castle. Someplace with a big fence.

“The school.”

“Wait, what?” Pepper said. There was no way that they could seriously be making them go back to school. Not in holiday time!

“Are you joking? Is that what this is, some big joke?” Wensley asked. The Them, who were piled into the backseat, looked at each other. No one was buying that.

“It is actually very safe there,” Aziraphale said. He turned around and put a delicate hand on the middle console. He reminded Pepper of Adam’s mum. “We’ve added some extra safety precautions.”

“ _We’ve_ added them, not quite, Angel. What happened to ‘let’s make Crowley-‘”

“It doesn’t matter who put them up!” Aziraphale said, frowning fondly at Crowley. That also reminded Pepper of Adam’s parents. “What matters is that they are there.”

“But what are there?” Brain asked.

“Demon-y things,” said Adam with great amounts of relish.

“ _Cool_ ,” said Brian.

“No, not cool!” Pepper said. Adam was tracing something on the window, hardly paying attention to the conversation. “Are you telling me that we’re meant to be protected by magic? Magic isn’t real.” Whatever Adam had drawn on the window pulsed a dull glow, and evaporated.

“No, kid, it isn’t…” Crowley started to say, but the car jerked while he was speaking, and he went so quiet Pepper couldn’t tell if he’d stopped speaking or suddenly stopped having a mouth.

“Who did that.” His voice was different. Softer. Sharper.

“That was me,” Adam said cheerily, oblivious to his dangerous tone. “I was drawing on the window.”

“What happened?” asked Aziraphale. He hadn’t been paying attention when the car moved.

“What bloody happened was…”

“Language, Crowley! There are _children_ …”

“They’ve stopped following us,” Adam said, and Brian swivelled around to look behind them.

“Who was following us?” Pepper asked.

“The demons,” Adam said. “They were right behind us the whole time. Did no one really hear them?”

The car went silent. Crowley swallowed nervously. Adam continued to smile, cheerful and oblivious to the growing distress in the car.

“Did… did no one hear them?” he asked, and Crowley shook his head. He looked at Adam in the rear-view mirror. His glasses reflected the light from the windscreen.

“There’s no one following us, Adam, because I trapped them in the woods,” Crowley said. Pepper grabbed Brian’s hand. “There isn’t any way they could have gotten out.”

Adam was glancing behind his shoulder as they drove, and the air in the car seemed to get thinner with every breath.

“You said it was a demon, Adam?” Aziraphale asked. The air trickled back into the car as Adam frowned.

“There were two of them,” Adam said, and Aziraphale said something in a language Pepper couldn’t place.

“If one of them wasn’t a demon, then they mightn’t’ve been trapped,” Wensleydale said.

“Oh,” said Pepper.

“That’s bad, isn’t it?” said Brian. Pepper flicked his ear.

“At least the school has more protections,” Aziraphale said. “I put them up last week. Once we cross the threshold, we will be fine, even if one of them is an angel.”

“I hope so,” Brian murmured, and Pepper flicked his ear again.

-

The protections in place at the school took Zephyre at least ten whole minutes to dismantle. They were powerful, yes, but old. Written millennia ago, and recreated by someone who hadn’t seen the fabric of space in even longer. They were strong, no doubt about that. But Zephyre knew the way around them.

Dia thought it was hilarious that Zephyre had tried to actually dismantle them instead of just hitting the barrier until it fell. That was her favourite strategy. It was more time consuming, yes, but also she got to hit something a bunch until it broke, which was fine by her.

“You do realise they are just sitting in there, with plenty of time to plan their next move, while you waste time out here?” Zephyre asked. They were sitting on one of the benches that surrounded the bark covered floor of the playground. There was absolutely no way that an adult-shaped angel could possibly look dignified doing so, but they were trying their best.

Dia paused her attack and looked at Zephyre with a wide grin. Her brow was covered in sweat from the roar of the fire.

“It’s all part of the process, Zeph, you gotta under…”

“Don’t call me _Zeph_ …”

“…stand that you gotta let them sweat it out a bit. Panic! Lose focus, all that good stuff.”

The protections extended 20 meters around the library and staffroom. Zephyre could just make out through the tinted glass the silhouette of the agents and the Them in the middle. To them, it looked like they were neither sweating it out nor panicking. Aziraphale had a cup of tea.

“Plus,” Dia added, setting one of the stray pieces of bark on fire, “I put a teleportation ring in the storage cupboard so we can just walk in. But this is more fun.” She hurled another ball of fire into the air and whooped as the sparks flew off the protection.

Creating the circle was easy enough. They used chalk from Dia’s pocket, which Zephyre stubbornly refused to touch. Dia had delighted in telling them in one of their mandatory progress update meetings how much of pocket lint was composed of human skin and bits of dirt. Zephyre could figure out what was on the chalk if pressed, but they didn’t want to.

Once inside the storage room, Zephyre immediately extinguished the fire (only mostly hellish) from the circle on the floor. They weren’t about to alert their targets on their secret entrance so quickly.

Inside a primary school in the English town of Tadfield, an angel and a demon crept towards the door to the library. Inside, an angel, a demon, an Antichrist, and three children pushed the last chair up against it.

“There!” said Pepper, “that should be enough.”

It would turn out not to be enough, sadly. Despite the protections that Aziraphale was adding with purple dry-erase pen to the vinyl covered table, the angel and demon managed to enter the library. It happened fast, in only two minutes total, but to the three children and one Antichrist watching from the centre of the library, time seemed slow.

Brian happened to glance up at the door while figuring out how to balance an asymmetrical child-sized lounger on top of the returns trolley.

“Um, Aziraphale? Is that meant to happen?” he asked, pointing at the shapes moving just outside the window in the door. Every window was tinted in this damn school, which made being certain of the whereabouts of ethereal beings quite difficult indeed.

Aziraphale looked, and the blood drained from his face.

“Get into the circle, children, quickly!” he said. Wensleydale picked up the heaviest book he could see, a hardback copy of Ripley’s _Believe It or Not_. Brian left the chair where it was and joined him. Pepper tugged on Adam’s shirt sleeve.

The agents entered the room.

“Aw, shit,” said Crowley, and created a tire iron.

“You really love those tire irons, huh?” said Dia.

“Why are you here?” Aziraphale asked, his hand hovering around where a sword would usually sit on his hip.

“This doesn’t have to be hard, Adam,” Zephyre said. “We only want to help.”

Adam shook his head. “You want to end the world. That’s not helping.”

The angel, the angel, the two demons, and the Antichrist stared at each other.

“It appears we’re at a standstill. Haven’t we done this before?” Crowley said.

“Quiet, demon. You’re only in this position again because you jeopardised the plan last time,” snapped Zephyre. “We’re here to get it back on track, that’s all. If you stop this nonsense now, there might actually be some saving your soul from whatever they’re going to do to you.” They gestured at Dia, who winked. Crowley had been on earth for too long, and he didn’t trust anything said with a wink.

“How could accosting these poor children and chasing them across Tadfield possibly help your plan?” Aziraphale cried. “He’s not going to start the War, and you know it!”

“Yeah,” said Adam petulantly. “I like earth the way it is.”

Dia laughed, and inside the circle, the three children tried to shake away the vertigo. Adam gritted his teeth.

“You really think that your choice will stop the War forever? That the Plan really cares about your feelings?” She barked out a laugh at Adam’s worried stare. “It’s gonna happen, stupid kid. It just won’t be you that brings it about.”

“There’s no one else who can,” Crowley said. “He’s the only one with the power. He’s the son of Satan, for crying out loud!”

“He isn’t _special_ ,” Dia said. “He’s just the vessel for His power. You really think there can never be another? And look at him! He’s about to cry. How can something that weak really be the only way?” It was true, Wensleydale noticed as he looked at Adam. He was blinking fast and clutching Pepper’s shirt with white knuckles.

“So, what’s your great plan then? Adam is protected by our power, you can’t get to him through us,” Aziraphale said. “He won’t help you; he’s made that clear. We know that he can’t stop the War, but what makes you think he’ll start it?”

Dia frowned when he said this and glanced at Zephyre.

“Don’t try this again, Aziraphale,” they said icily. “No matter how much you try to manipulate the words to get out of this, you can’t this time. There will be a War, and the Antichrist will start it. Your transparent technicalities aren’t going to stop it.”

Aziraphale had gotten more and more pale as they spoke, backing up closer to the circle, and Crowley. Zephyre continued.

“You want Heaven to win? This is the only way.”

“Perhaps Heaven shouldn’t win, then!” Aziraphale snapped. “If Heaven is so determined to destroy the one thing it was created to love and cherish, something has gone rotten.” Much to his surprise, and the surprise of everyone in the room, Zephyre laughed.

“You really have gone rogue. Once this is over, Gabriel will not be happy with you. We were going to offer you command, did you know? Michael told me herself that if you managed to do your job without getting caught up with the demon that she would forgive you for your years of incompetence. Now they’ll need to find something to do with the unforgivable angel, and it will not be pleasant!”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Crowley hissed, stalking over to Zephyre. They took a step back in surprise but held their ground. “He’s done nothing but what your sorry excuse for an office is meant to do. If you threaten him…”

“Look!” yelled Dia, sparking fire lazily at her fingertips. “The demon cares! He really cares!” She smiled at Crowley and while the smile split her face to the cheekbone, it didn’t reach her eyes. “You’ve gone soft. Coward.”

“Enough!” cried Adam, and all four beings turned to him. The look on his face was determined, though his hands shook.

“You arguing isn’t going to change my mind.” Dia opened her mouth to speak, but Adam glared at her with such renewed ferocity that she shut it again. “You keep talking about me as if I’m not even here. And you keep being mean to Aziraphale and Crowley, who are only trying to help save us! Why should I go with you if everything you’ve said so far has been bad?”

“It isn’t about what you think is right, Adam,” Dia said, “it’s about the Plan.”

“Not if I change the plan,” Adam said, and Dia giggled. “I did it last time, I can do it again!”

“Can he?” Crowley whispered to Aziraphale.

“If he believes that he can,” Aziraphale murmured back.

“Go ahead then, kid. Go and change Her Plan. Good luck.”

Adam looked over at Crowley, who nodded. He let go of Pepper and Wensleydale and stepped out of the circle.

The runes that Crowley had drawn around the circle were special. They helped protect Adam from all agents present, meaning that the only non-human who could cross the threshold was him. The symbols stopped anything ethereal from entering or exiting the circle.

The power under his skin crackled as soon as he crossed the threshold. Crowley could feel the ozone in the room deepen. Zephyre and Dia stood their ground, although Zephyre gritted their teeth at the demonic power that surged on every exhale.

“You can do it,” Crowley said, keeping his focus on the opposing agents. “Believe you can.”

Adam stretched his neck to the side. He almost glowed, but it was unlike anything that even Aziraphale had seen before. This glow contained so much more, was so much richer and denser. Inside the circle, Pepper recognised the feeling in the room from the description that Adam had given from his dreams.

“I don’t want the world to end. Not now, not ever. Just… stop it! Stop it from ever happening!” The words echoed and absorbed into Adam’s chest in equal measure.

“I won’t do it!” Adam yelled, looking up at something that no one else could see. “You can’t make me!”

“It isn’t working!” Dia yelled, and Zephyre shook their head. Adam looked to Crowley for reassurance, but he could offer none. Dia started laughing, and Adam could feel a lump form in the back of his throat.

“No…” he whispered. “This is supposed to work…”

“We can take it away for you,” Zephyre said, holding out their hand. “We know how to make it stop.”

“No, you don’t!” Pepper yelled from inside the circle. “You just want him to stop saving us!”

“He can’t save you, stupid girl. He’s unsavable!” Dia yelled.

Crowley felt the final shred of doubt in the plan fall away, and he looked at Aziraphale. Tried to speak with just his eyes.

“Yes, he can!” Wensleydale said. “He can do anything!” Aziraphale took a moment to look at the Them, and all their humanity, and nodded once.

“We believe in you, Adam,” Brian cried. Dia grinned with too many teeth and cracked a neck with too many bones.

Crowley took a smart step towards Adam and placed a hand on his shoulder. Aziraphale did the same. Zephyre looked at Dia with panic in their eyes, but she didn’t notice. The contact sent a shockwave up Aziraphale’s arm and turned Crowley’s to ice, but they held on tight. A black stain crept up their fingers, and Adam’s eyes glowed bright.

“The world is going to end, and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it,” Dia said and threw the ball of fire in her hand. _They said no maiming,_ she thought, _but what did they expect?_

“Yes, there is,” Adam said, and time exploded. Adam crumpled to the floor. Aziraphale and Crowley’s hearts starting beating.

For the second time, the universe knitted itself back together and carried on as usual.

Zephyre rushed to Adam’s body and checked his pulse. There was something deeply wrong with this situation, and Zephyre could tell that whatever had happened had repercussions far beyond their influence. As they arranged Adam’s body in the recovery pose, they reflected on the state of their assignment. And, as usual, it all came back to Aziraphale and Crowley.

“You must realise that there is nothing you can do to evade consequences any longer,” Zephyre said, rising from their knees. Aziraphale’s jovial face held no pretence of diplomacy. He looked angry. His face wasn’t used to doing that.

“I understand,” Aziraphale said. “But you must understand one thing. Whatever I did, whatever my actions led to, was out of Love for the world. Not for revenge, or anger. Simply Love for all Her creations.”

“Even the fallen ones, it would seem,” Zephyre said. They tried to imagine what fundamental truth must have been broken inside of Aziraphale for such a thing to have happened and found that they couldn’t.

“ _All_ Her creations,” Aziraphale said, glancing at Crowley.

“You’re really fucked now,” Dia said, pointing at Crowley. “I cannot _wait_ for whatever they’re gonna do to you. It’s gonna be so much fun, you’ve been _such_ a pain in the ass.”

“Ouch,” Crowley said.

Dia spat at the floor nearly Crowley’s feet and it ate away at the carpet. Zephyre rolled their eyes and continued checking Adam for any wounds. His hands and face were still brighter than any humans should be, but it was fading fast.

“One job. You had one, singular job,” a voice said. “And this is how you finish it?”

The children, who had slumped down together against the check-out desk behind Aziraphale, appeared not to notice it. Aziraphale certainly did, and they moved closer together in-between the voice and the Them. Dia mumbled something under their breath, no longer smiling at the thought of torturing Crowley. Zephyre placed Adam’s head carefully on the ground and stood.

“What on earth happened here?” asked the Metatron.

“We were about to secure the Antichrist, your holiness, but the other agents sabotaged our attempt.”

“What it looked like to me,” boomed the ethereal voice of the Metatron, “was that you dropped the ball.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Zephyre said, bewildered.

“You really messed this one up,” said a distinctly more corporeal voice. This one everyone could hear. And see.

“Lord Beelzebub!” Crowley said, looking seconds away from turning and bolting. “What brings you here?”

Beelzebub gave him a look that killed one of the flies buzzing around their head. “Clean up duty.”

“We need to return all agents to their respective Head Offices for appropriate disciplines.” Their voice droned. “The humans will be mind-wiped and returned to their normal lives. The Antichrist will be returned to Hell’s systems…”

“No!” cried Crowley, hurrying over to where Adam lay. “He’s only a child, you can’t do that…”

“It will be done,” Beelzebub said, getting increasingly visibly frustrated, “no matter what you try to do to stop it. You really aren’t that powerful in the grand scheme of things.”

“This discourse is tiresome,” the Metatron said and disappeared along with the Heavenly agent. Beelzebub snapped their fingers, and the Hellish ones disappeared in a cloud of flies.

The Them rushed over to Adam, who had just begun to stir back into consciousness. Pepper and Brian tried to remember the first aid they’d learned in class, muttering something about lights and tests under their breaths. Wensleydale, who remembered everything, could barely see Adam through blurry vision. He grabbed on to his hand and held it tight. Adam blinked up at him and smiled gratefully. Wensleydale blushed and brought his hand to his chest.

“Where did they go?” he rasped, and Pepper looked up.

Aziraphale was shivering, his jacket covered in a thin layer of frost. His skin was far pinker than it once was, and it reminded Pepper of Adam’s nose in the winter. He was distractedly patting his jacket as if he couldn’t believe it was still there.

Crowley’s glasses were broken. That was all Pepper could register before he was rushing over to the Them and kneeling down.

“We need to move, quickly, before they realise that we’re still here,” Crowley said, helping Adam to get up. “Can you walk?”

“It’s okay, we don’t need to hurry,” Adam said. “They aren’t coming back. I made sure they couldn’t.”

“What do you mean, they can’t come back?” Pepper asked.

“Remember what I told you I saw, in my dream?” Adam asked. “How the lines got erased? I did that.”

“But what were the lines?” Pepper asked. Aziraphale gasped and fumbled for something in his pockets.

“I understand you; I know what you’re talking about my dear boy. If I just had…” He patted down his pockets again. “I… I can’t seem to find it.” This was the first time in his existence Aziraphale hadn’t found what he was looking for appearing right where he needed it. He couldn’t feel that surge of creation either, to make it appear. He stopped patting his pockets.

“What lines?” Crowley asked, peering at Aziraphale from behind his glasses.

“They’re the trails of energy from ethereal activities. It’s how I always know where to find you,” he said, draping his arm over Crowley’s shoulders.

“So, are they coming back? Are we safe now?” Brian asked, awkwardly patting Adam on the back.

“Yes,” Adam said, “I made sure of it.”

Several remarkable things had happened in the past hours. The universe shifted just slightly to the right and left the essences of three souls behind. One was an angel who ran a bookshop, the other was a demon who wasn’t very good at it. The third, the bringer of the End Times. Their souls, who didn’t know any better, continued on in spite of the shift.

In their respective Head Offices, a Lord and a bureaucrat tried desperately to open a door that no longer existed.

Outside the library, the defences crumbled, and a tenacious former-hell hound bounded up to the door and started scratching to get in.

The three beings and three humans decided to walk home. The silent air gave them a chance to process everything they’d seen and experienced. Things had changed now. But, as Adam reflected, the universe was always changing. The world was always spinning. He was here, now, with his best friends and his dog, and that was all that mattered.

Aziraphale walked close to Crowley behind the children. He didn’t feel that cloying sickness that he was being watched, about to be found out for the crime of loving a demon. There was a lightness in his chest, and he allowed it to carry him through the walk home. This was their chance to finally stop looking over their shoulder and to just exist. He didn’t realise how long he’d been wanting it.

Beside him, Crowley reached out and took his hand. It amazed him, to be able to reach out. For so long the only way to be close to Aziraphale had been to keep himself distanced, to not go too fast. Demons weren’t supposed to want Love but Crowley wasn’t a demon anymore. And so he could love. He let it fill his heart, and ran his thumb over Aziraphale’s knuckles. Laughed at the stone Brian kicked at Pepper. Saw Adam glance over at Wensleydale and see something familiar.

It rained on the walk home. Adam hadn’t wanted it to, and yet it did.


End file.
